


dissonant coda

by emollience



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Mutual Pining, Politics, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Time Skips, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2019-10-09 21:53:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17413415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emollience/pseuds/emollience
Summary: A dream: Adora, white Horde shirt clinging to her skin, her hair falling loose from its ponytail. She leans over Catra supine in bed, a golden tendril of hair brushing Catra’s cheek. “You left,” she whispers. Her breath ghosts over Catra’s mouth. “You left me too.”*adora stays with light hope. the world stutters and continues on.





	1. sever along the spire

**Author's Note:**

> if no one else will write an 'adora stays to train with light hope for years' au, then i guess i gotta

 

 

"I want to stop           being this way        I ask

what it would take to be a sacrifice worthy of the sacrifices that precede me"

 _—_ **_Julian Randall,_ ** _from “A Thousand Cardinals,”_ _Refuse_

“Whatever I was, whatever I wasn’t — it’s all in what I am. Whatever I wanted, whatever I didn’t want — all of this has shaped me. Whatever I loved, or stopped loving — in me it’s the same nostalgia.”

 _—_ **_Fernando Pessoa_ ** _(1880-1935), from “Oxfordshire” (6 August 1931)_

 

**PART ONE:**

 

_Light Hope stands above her, iridescent form flickering in and out, voice echoing throughout the room, in her head:_

You must let go.

_And so Adora does._

 

*

 

When she wakes up her limbs are all wrong: longer; thinner; yet...heavier. Her shoes pinch at her toes. The sleeves of her shirt stop before the bony bumps of her wrists.

Groaning, she drags herself up. Her joints creak and crack. It only takes a bit of fumbling until her fingers wrap around the crisp cold hilt of her sword laying beside her. Her throat burns as she whispers, “For the honor of Grayskull,” to an all too empty room.

The Crystal Castle bears silence: No mechanical spiders crawl out of the dark corners; no estranged best friend sneaks behind her. A kaleidoscope of lights follow her out of the halls, reflecting off the shining surface of her sword.

“She-Ra,” Light Hope says, everywhere and nowhere, a persistent scratch at the back of her skull. “You know what you must do?”

She-Ra pauses. Her fingers clench tight around the hilt. “Yes.”

The exit yawns wide before her.

“Then go.”

 

*

 

Snow settles on She-Ra’s face. She blinks up at the low evening light filtered through the canopy of trees. The cold bites at her bare glowing arms, her legs, except no goosebumps decorate her skin.

The disconnect slows her steps. She moves her toes inside her boots and they wiggle like they should, but she holds a hand up to the sky and the snow melts on contact.

The Whispering Forest breathes too loud a silence. She strains her ears, yet she never catches the stray scuttling of bugs or bushes rustling with life. The quiet travels alongside her all the way to the edge of the trees, right at the border of Bright Moon.

And then: the groaning of tanks over roots; the hiss of fire and smoke. The sky darkens to an ashen gray above her. There, across a rippling dark lake, on the base of Bright Moon’s castle, a red Horde symbol glares back at her.

Her throat tightens. In another life, she’d fall to her knees. In another life, she’d shrink smaller and smaller, no longer a warrior, but a girl.

She-Ra gives the castle one last lingering look. She disappears into the trees once more.

 

*

 

_The transition from Adora to She-Ra exists in a gradual decline._

_Light Hope would say she rises, instead. “You are following the path you were born to. You are undoing Mara’s wrongs.”_

_Except Adora does not know or understand Mara’s wrongs. Except Adora never learns of Mara other than the brief flashes Light Hope offers like penance: A skeletal face bearing over Mara’s limping form; Mara’s laughter; Mara’s screams as Despandos surrounded Etheria._

_“You shall not be her,” Light Hope promises._

_“Why not?” Adora asks. “Why not?”_

_“The She-Ra line existed long before Despandos.” Light Hope waves a hand and the stars weave a pattern above their heads. “Balance is key, She-Ra.”_

_“Adora,” she says. She reaches up to a twinkling spot just beyond reach. It brightens. It dies. “I’m Adora.”_

 

*

The deeper into the forest, the colder the air stifles. Remaining in this form keeps her warm, the insulated heat of the runestone and She-Ra’s magic enough to ward away the falling temperature. Had there been any sign of life, the ethereal glow surrounding her body might call attention, but the silence lingers in every crook she finds.

Past the Crystal Castle, through a long forgotten path in the trees, She-Ra stumbles onto a familiar cottage except --

The door hangs open off its hinges. Icicles decorate the top of the doorframe. Inside, toppled furniture litters the ground. She checks the cabinets, the drawers, and finds nothing but stray jewelry and expired food.

She almost walks away, but on the fireplace mantle, fallen onto its side, lies a golden framed photograph. She-Ra wipes dust from the glass and stares down at the image of two women grinning at the camera, flowers in their hair. Razz, young and unwrinkled, eyes shining behind the thick lenses of her wide rimmed glasses, has an arm wrapped around the waist of a taller woman. Blonde, thick browed, with a smile just a touch too tense at the corner, this woman leans against Razz. She clutches a bouquet of pink and red carnations to her chest.

They both wear white.

_Mara could not let go._

She-Ra settles the photograph back right onto the mantle.

The bedroom reveals less. She turns over the mattress and finds animal pelts, forgotten puzzles, and for whatever reason battered Horde battle armor. The closet doors bulge with fluffy dresses and thick boots that pop out the second she pulls them open.

Nothing taken. Nothing missing. A forest frozen over and abandoned. Bright Moon under Horde occupation.

She slides down against a wall and drags her hands over her face with a groan. The back of her head hits the wall with a loud thud and she stares around the room, scowling, until right there, half peeling from the right corner of the room -- a poster of some sort.

She stands and crosses the room. She’s careful to remove it slow and steady from its pasted position until it’s fully in her grasp. And it’s not a poster at all, but rather an old and detailed map of the eastern hemisphere of Etheria, colors long faded. Notes in looping cursive decorate the entirety of it.

One particular sentence stands out among the rest, circled with an arrow leading to a small point in the center:

_When all else fails, find Halfmoon._

 

*

 

She-Ra leaves the Whispering Forest with little fanfare and not so much as a look back. She heads east with a sword at her back, a map at her belt, and a duffel bag full of canned foods and a couple of threadbare blankets.

The days and nights pass. She walks. She climbs. She stuffs her crown and blaring red cape inside her bag; draws a baggy pink sweater from Razz’s closet over her head; dims the glow of her skin. No one stops her in the small villages she passes through. In and out, like a thief, with no eyes lingering.

It’s odd, she thinks, to slough through the weeks with no voice other than her own. Light Hope had been a constant for however long they had been together. Now, she wakes alone. Now, she passes the time counting her steps or consulting the map. She wonders --

She cannot. She does not.

Rosewood lies far past Horde territory. A small village spread out throughout the hills in a series of cottages. So small she can’t remember ever learning its name back in the Horde -- _let go, it does you little good to linger, She-Ra_ \-- and it wears its insignificance well. Its civilians walk with no worries. Children run and play with abandon.

She stops at a river cutting through the west portion of the village and settles by a tree, legs sprawled before her. A pair of siblings splash in the water, giggles loud and high. Their parents, sitting on a checkered red and white blanket, watch from a spot nearby. They hold hands.

Something -- unease, dark and thick like tar -- twists at her stomach. She clenches her hand; feels the skin pulled tight over her knuckles. A phantom warmth settles over her palm.

She packs up as quickly as she had arrived, laughter echoing behind her.

 

*

 

 _At night, she remembers: the pitter-patter of her heart following the grand peal of Catra’s giggles; the warmth of Glimmer and Bow’s arms wrapped around her; Glimmer’s hand at her hair,_ I’m right here _, following the cry of her name; the slither of dark shadows following, trailing, always there at the corner of her eye._

_Light Hope berates her for it. She never feels, Adora thinks. An artificial intelligence with a singular purpose isn’t meant to. She stands before her and preaches the importance of cutting attachments. She guides her how to tap into the sword’s runestone and control its magic. There is little else to discuss, after all._

_“Do you know anything about the outside world,” she asks, once._

_Light Hope flickers. “I do.”_

_“Are my friends okay?” Adora slides the sword into its scabbard at her back. “What’s happened to them while I’ve been gone?”_

_“It does not matter.”_

_“Of course it matters! I just -- I just left them without warning or explanation and I have no idea what’s going on at all --”_

_“This is why you’ve yet to progress.” Light Hope materializes so close to Adora that had she a corporeal form the tips of their noses would touch. “You can do little more than change the runestone from sword to shield because you lack focus. Like Mara.”_

_“I am so sick of hearing about Mara without knowing anything about her.”_

_“You know enough.”_

_She throws her hands up. “I don’t know anything!”_

_Light Hope reaches forward. Her finger glitches as it touches Adora’s temple. “You will now.”_

 

*

 

Strands of sweat-soaked hair stick to She-Ra’s forehead. She peels off the sweater midway into the forest, but that does little to alleviate the suffocating humidity. Everything clings: her soaked shirt and shorts; her hair to every bit of bare skin it can find.

Up ahead she catches sight of a small pond. She runs towards it, kicking off her boots and pulling off her clothes along the way, and sighs as soon as she splashes into the cool water. She floats on her back, head tilted back, water kissing her forehead.

Something brushes her foot.

She kicks at it. She fumbles into the water until she’s right back up again, fists raised, but no one appears. And then, a gray and green object floats past her.

Her hand shakes as she grabs ahold of it and stares at a the glaring red Horde symbol stamped center on the chest plate.

Wading through the water, she finds others: a Horde helmet; tattered and long faded bits of fabric; a lost boot. Worst of all: bones -- small ones, small like a child -- resting deep on the pond floor.

She pulls herself out of the water, shaking and panting. Forehead pressed against the rough bark of a tree, she forces herself to slow her breathing. It makes sense. It makes sense for the Horde to have stretched beyond the western hemisphere, though she doesn’t -- can’t remember ever having been taught about a siege this far out east. None of their school lessons ever even mentioned these jungles. But there’s no denying the armor and the bones.

She gets dressed without drying herself off. By the time she finds a trail of skeletons, destroyed armor and clothes, she’s soaked in sweat all over again. She ties her hair in a knot at the nape of her neck and follows the path until she reaches a wide break in the trees.

A Horde flag waves slow and serene at center. Whatever Halfmoon once was is now replaced by the charred remains of buildings and tanks. She enters half standing homes and finds nothing but more and more bones and long destroyed furniture. Bugs crawl among the ground, the only other life around her.

_When all else fails, find Halfmoon._

She-Ra stabs her sword into the ground with a loud cry. She falls onto her knees and presses her forehead against the hilt, eyes clenched shut and burning.

 _There will be loss_ , Light Hope once said. Bright Moon gone; Razz -- the _only_ living being who knew Etheria before Despandos -- missing; Halfmoon destroyed. What is She-Ra meant to do with it all? What can she do?

Something cold touches the back of her neck.

“State your purpose,” a mechanic voice monotones.

She-Ra stiffens. “I was searching for Halfmoon.”

Silence. She looks over her shoulder and meets the empty stare of two bright glowing violet eyes.

The robot tilts its head. “State your name and affiliation.”

“She-Ra, Princess of Power,” she answers. “Member of the Princess Alliance and Rebellion.”

The ensuing buzz rings across the clearing. “False intel.”

“What do you mean _false intel_?” Her eyebrow twitches. “I’m right here! What other eight foot tall glowing princesses are out there?”

“Detecting aggression.” It presses the blaster closer against her skin. “Disengage or else.”

“I’m not --” She groans. “I am Princess She-Ra. I come in peace. Please.”

A pause.

“Follow me,” the robot orders. It pulls its weapon away and walks towards the trees.

She-Ra pulls the sword out from the ground and follows.

The robot stands tall. It’s covered in sleek silver metal, joints void of creaking unlike the bots back at the Horde. It walks silent, smooth, better than any human would. Even trying as hard as she can to avoid stepping on twigs and leaves, every crunch of She-Ra’s steps are too loud.

It leads her through an indecipherable path: down winding slopes of dirt and bushes; past rushing rivers and ponds glittering in the moonlight until it comes to a stop at a narrow cave opening.

It stills. It waits. She-Ra peeks around its shoulder and jumps when a green beam of light scans its figure up and down.

“Bot 6425 detected.”

What appeared a dark path leading to a cavern flickers and reveals a dark hall lit by amber crystals embedded in the walls and ceiling.

“Follow me,” it repeats.

The door shuts behind her.

“Don’t really have much of a choice now, do I?” she responds.

The crystals gleam to light the further down they go. She reaches up to run her fingers across the smooth iridescent surface and finds herself smiling as it grows brighter at her touch.

She trails after the bot no less than a few steps behind as it leads her through different forking halls, past towering stalagmites and slow moving rivers, until she loses track of where they once entered.

It could be a trap except --

Something about its design rings familiar.

They stop at another door, this time black steel contrasting the stone wall. Another light scans the bot. The door slides open.

“-- another successful scouting mission. Still need to configure certain social settings, but overall bot 6425 is functioning at optimal capacity,” a nasally voice rises from the dark.

She-Ra freezes.

Before the large looming screen splintered into several views stands a short figure propped up by a mass of violet hair.

“And what do you know?” she says into a tape recorder as she rises on her hair. “It _is_ She-Ra. Note to self: report findings later.”

She-Ra drops her sword. It clatters to the ground. “Entrapta?”

“Heya, Adora,” Entrapta answers. One of her pigtails reach forward, ends shaped like fingers. “Long time no see.”

“I -- I don’t understand.” She stares at Entrapta -- face thinner, eyes wide and bright -- and her throat tightens. “You were dead.”

“Oh. Yeah.” A purple pigtail waves off the comment. Entrapta grins. “Long story. Condensed version: all a big misunderstanding. Didn’t die.”

“Misunderstanding,” She-Ra says slowly, tasting the phrase. The memory of glistening tears rolling down Mermista’s face rises. She forces herself to breathe. “And the long story?”

“No time for that.” Entrapta swings on her hair, impossibly longer and thicker, towards another door. The dark of her clothes blend in with the room. “Come on. I gotta report this.”

“Wait! Report to who?”

Silence.

The bot stands still where it had stopped. She-Ra waves a hand in front of its face.

It grabs her palm.

She screams.

“Do not do that.” It lets go of her, picks up its blaster, and walks back towards the exit.

She shakes her hand. “Noted.”

“Are you coming?” She-Ra turns. Entrapta sticks her head out from the other door, grin wide. “You’re gonna want to see this.”

 

*

 

They descend deeper and deeper into the cave where the amber crystals grow in size and bulk, embedded in the stalagmites as tall as the highest tower in the Fright Zone and the ceiling, even the ground beneath their feet. Entrapta points at them and rambles about their motion sensored lights; how everything’s natural save for the bridges they cross or the shining stone arcs chiseled away by sentient hands.

“I’m fairly sure the First Ones first found these caverns themselves.” Entrapta swings up a particularly wide stalagmite and stands still as She-Ra climbs after her. “However, I’ve searched and searched but I can’t find any trace of their technology as of yet. To be fair, though, these are the largest caverns in Etheria. Bigger than the Kingdom of Snows itself. So I have a lot of ground to cover.”

“Really?” She-Ra grunts as she pulls herself up next to Entrapta. She wipes at her forehead and glances around the chamber. A shimmering lake surrounded by pearl white sand rests below them. She squints at the tiny silhouettes of people peppered throughout the sand and water.  

Entrapta follows her gaze. “We can go swimming later, if you want.”

“Oh, that’s not --” A tendril of violet hair wraps around her waist and drags her towards a wooden bridge towards another cavern. “Whoa, okay, I can _walk!_ ”

“Not fast enough.” Entrapta grins back at her.

The further they go she witnesses: cable cars connecting chambers to chambers; houses decorating the cavern walls with swooping, elegant arcs and pillars; a marketplace in full boom, colorful pots of foods and spices peppered throughout, dresses and other fabrics hanging off mannequins hidden by glass windows. People just as human as her and Entrapta walk past, but she catches glimpses of others with tufts of fur at their elbows; with catlike ears that twitch every so often; with slender or fluffy or short tails.

She-Ra’s heartbeat throbs at her ears. A vendor smiles at her, glowing green and brown eyes crinkling at the corners.

“Entrapta,” she tugs at her hair, “where are we?”

Another grin. “Halfmoon.”

 

*

 

“They should be here already.” Entrapta leads her to a house on the upper levels, less opulent than the ones below: no smooth pillars or curving staircases. Crystals flicker on as they enter a living room furnished with only two plain couches and travel to a small kitchen with an adjacent dining room. “Though they’re both supposed to be in meetings all day, so who knows if they’ll actually show up. I did ping through the emergency channels --”

“And scared me half to death!” a familiar voice answers from behind. She-Ra stiffens. “I thought we were attacked again.”

“As if!” Entrapta opens a cabinet and pulls out a mug. She travels through the kitchen, pouring herself water and grabbing a small cupcake. “With the patrols I’ve set up? And the shields? And the maze? Only reason Adora got in is because I let her.”

She-Ra turns just as Scorpia squeezes in.

“Whoa.” They stare at one another. Scorpia points at her own forehead. “Where’s your tiara?”

“Oh.” She-Ra blinks. She shrugs a shoulder forward, the duffel bag following. “In here.”

“Good call! Between you and me, no one around here really likes the princesses.” She grins. “I mean, they know about me and Entrapta but we’re exceptions.”

Entrapta, mouth full of chocolate, nods.

“Why?” She-Ra scowls.

Scorpia blinks. She looks back at Entrapta who shakes her head.

“Uh, we’ll explain later.” She claps her claws together. “Want a tour of the house?”

“I guess.”

“Cool!” Scorpia grins and leads her out to the hall. Lights flicker on, reflecting off the shining black armor Scorpia wears. No Horde insignia; no Force Captain badge.

“We’ve been living in this place for around...three years now?” Scorpia stops to fix a vase of bioluminescent teal flowers. “ _Way_ nicer than the Horde. Remember how they wouldn’t let us decorate our rooms?”

_Catra, seven or eight years old, on her knees with chalk in hand as she grinned at Adora over her shoulder. Two caricatures of their faces smiled back at them._

She-Ra frowns. “Yeah.”

Scorpia takes her through the first and second floor, pointing at the different paintings and decorations throughout their home, grinning as she looks back at She-Ra’s face. She’s...friendlier than She-Ra remembers. Her limbs tense in remembrance of a night at the Kingdom of Snows, a trembling palace, but no attack ever comes.

“And this is our room.” Scorpia waves a claw forward. A pink and white floral comforter lays over the bed with a party of stuffed animals over the pillows. Scorpia grabs a brown bear and hugs it to her chest as she sits at the edge. “Entrapta let me pick everything out.”

The heart shaped mirror above the vanity punctuates that remark. She-Ra stares at the wide blue eyes blinking back at her, bruising bags underneath them. She freezes. Dirt smudges her hollowed cheeks, traveling down her jaw all the way down her neck. Her hair’s tangled with branches and leaves throughout the mass of yellow hair.  

She rips her gaze away and crosses towards the window. Cable cars travel above them, heads peeking out the windows.

“Are...Are you okay?”

She-Ra looks over her shoulder.

“It’s just...You’ve looked better, no offense.” Scorpia shifts in her seat. “And it’s been a while.”

“I’m fine,” she answers. She nods towards the door. “How long have you two been together?”

“About a year now.” Scorpia grins, hugging the bear tight. “It’s...nice. Real nice. No one here _cares_ , you know? Well, they do, but in a nice way.”

“Oh.” She leans against the windowsill. “It was like that in Bright Moon too.”

Scorpia glances at the door, smile falling. “Sorry about that.”

She blinks. “Sorry?”

“Yeah, you know. About the siege ”

“Guys!” Locks of hair grasp the stair railings and pull Entrapta up. “New plan: Meetup at City Center.”

“Wait, why?” She-Ra stands to full height, crossing her arms. “Can we just pause for a second? What the hell is going on?”

Entrapta opens her mouth, but then:

A familiar low chuckle.

She-Ra freezes.

A slender silhouette leaps down from the upper floor and straightens up, slow and languid.

“Still as patient as ever, huh?”

Her hair’s shorter, the ends brushing against the sharp cut of her jaw.

She-Ra’s heartbeat throbs at her ears, her neck.

“Hey Adora.”

 

*

 

_“Do you understand?” Light Hope asks._

_Adora stares at her hands: the dry, cracking red knuckles; the faint scars from a childhood of Catra learning to retract her claws; the rough, calloused palms._

_Mara left bloody prints on the white of her suit. She had wiped and wiped on the thinning fabric. Her frantic cries echoed as the stars disappeared until nothing but a black sky stretched over her head. A body laid at her feet. She couldn’t look down. Wouldn’t look down._

_“I think,” Adora says, “I’m starting to.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> __  
>  [Honey when you come back / I know you'll find it suited best / All the time away from me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q58CFkTl5r4)   
> 


	2. got sandpaper teeth

_[black lights on all night/ the day couldn’t see / two mirrors were talking / just not listening](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF3oRU7w-tU) _

 

 

_“Sit,” Light Hope commands. “And listen.”_

_Adora, already sitting, legs crossed, frowns. “I have been. Like, this entire time.”_

_“No, you have not.”_

_The setting shifts. What was once violets and blues in flickering waves around them shudders to the steady heat of a desert, towering mountains on all sides._

_“Etheria must be healed. Do you feel it?”_

_Adora places a hand flat on the ground. Oddly enough, despite the simulation, it warms her palm. She flexes her fingers; digs her nails into the branching cracks along the dirt._

_“I...feel sand?”_

_Light Hope stares._

_“Okay, okay. Sorry.” She sighs, forcing her shoulders back, her back ramrod straight. This time, she touches both hands to the rough ground and closes her eyes._

_“Listen to Etheria,” Light Hope says, everywhere and nowhere at once. “It has been calling to you your whole life.”_

_She hears her thrumming heartbeat throbbing at her ears; the quiet inhale and exhale of her breath; the faint breeze brushing past the back of her neck; the glitching static of Light Hope near. Otherwise: nothing._

_And then, straining, something like a hiss or maybe a whisper. She leans forward, hands sliding against the dirt, nails digging deep. Etheria groans. It trembles, nearly indecipherable. An exhaustion bone-deep_ — _core deep_ — _trudges along the planet, begging, crying._

_When Adora opens her eyes and meets Light Hope’s stare, twin trails of tears glisten on her cheeks._

 

*

 

“Whoa!” Catra holds her hands up. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

She-Ra’s grip around the hilt of her sword tightens. It still resides inside its scabbard at her back, only half pulled out. She stands, knees bent, heart racing, staring down a smirking Catra. With Scorpia standing at her side, Entrapta behind Catra, the room is packed. The steady buzz of people walking and talking outside permeates through the walls.

She’d lose the second the sword comes out.

She forces herself to let go.

“Nice to see you too.” Catra leans against the doorframe, arms folded across her chest. “Love what you’ve done to your hair. Very nature-chic.”

Silence. From the corner of her eye, She-Ra catches Scorpia shifting her weight from foot to foot.

“What the hell,” she says, teeth gritted, “is going on?”

“The usual: We’re late to lunch. One of Entrapta’s bots glitched and sent a civilian through a wall. Scorpia’s bad interior decorating.”

“You said you liked the new shower curtain!”

Catra shrugs. “Now that we’re all caught up: We really gotta get going.”

 

*

 

The cable car travels slow through the main chamber. She-Ra sits with her face and hand pressed against the glass window, gaze flitting from the homes carved out of stone, the colorful marketplace, the endless stream of civilians traveling and mingling. She thinks of Bright Moon in the Before, with its eerie calm and quiet, entirely unlike the endless machinal thrumming heartbeat of the Fright Zone.

Her chest tightens. She pushes away from the window and sits back.

Entrapta and Scorpia sit together, bent over a small circular bot in the former’s hand. It hovers above her palm. Two small circles flash in succession, flickering between red and blue and green, as it clicks up at them.

“It’s supposed to read your vitals,” Catra explains. It crawls over Entrapta’s wrist. “She’s been working on it for a while. It’s portable for field medics.”

“Oh.” She-Ra shifts in her seat. Her knee brushes Catra’s. “That’s, uh, handy.”

Catra hums. She turns away, arms and legs crossed, to stare out the window. Her headpiece is gone. A deep and wide scar bisects her left eyebrow, ending just above her eye. It’s not new. Long faded and paler than the brown of her skin, it wears weeks or months or even years.

Scorpia said they’d been living in their current home around three years. Three years are enough to have inflicted that sort of damage on Bright Moon. Three years enough to have slept in the Crystal Palace with only Light Hope for company.

Except, looking at the sharp lines of Catra’s face, baby fat long gone, three years sound too small.

Mouth dry, She-Ra stares down at her lap. She wrings her hands together. By the time the cable car comes to a stop, she’s slow to stand, her knees cracking and stiff.

She trails after the group, head tilted back, staring at the array of amber crystals lighting the chamber. Its smaller than the previous one, only a few buildings surrounding a circular one with pillars holding up a shimmering glass ceiling. Less populated too: They enter the towering circular building and their steps break the empty silence blanketing the foyer.

It’s...opulent: large and lavished with silk curtains, colorful carpets, even sculptures and paintings. Plants hang from the wall; wrap around pillars and windows. The light from the crystals outside filter through the stained glass ceiling, bathing the entire room in a kaleidoscope of varying colors.

She hangs back. She stares at the colors splayed over the skin of her hand, her arm, similar to the halls of the Crystal Palace.

“Hey.” She-Ra’s head snaps up. Catra stares at her from the doorway, a hand on her hip. A beam of violet light illuminates the glowing blue and gold of her eyes. “You coming?”

She nods. She follows.

The silence gives way to a steady hum of conversation once they reach the second floor. Catra straightens her back; holds her chin up high. Entrapta and Scorpia fall back and follow behind her into the room. It’s enough to give She-Ra pause.

Inside sits a group of around twenty people, all dressed in varying shades of burgundy and purple. They all fall silent when She-Ra enters the room, all eyes landing on her.

Catra plops onto a windowsill by the back. She sits hugging one knee to her chest, her other leg hanging off. She grins and gestures towards her with a wave. “Surprise.”

A woman with black ears at the head of the table stands. Her tail, just as dark, hangs stiff and low. “C’yra. Explain.”

Catra’s tail curls around her waist. “She’s my late pass.”

“You brought a _princess_ ,” the woman hisses, “without reason; without passing through the proper channels, or obtaining permission —”

“Please,” She-Ra says, holding up a hand. “I don’t mean to cause any of you trouble.”

“You will speak when addressed.” The woman narrows her eyes. Her claws scrape against the wooden table. “Things are different here than whatever kingdom you once hid yourself in.”

No one moves.

“C’yra,” she says, turning to look at Catra once more, “you will answer for this later.”

Catra wrinkles her nose.

The woman stands to full height, back straight. She wears a bright red dress, sleeves long and loose, with matching flowing pants, similar to Catra’s burgundy ensemble. It hangs off her, elegant and proud, contrasting the glow of her gold and blue eyes.

“I am Chancellor Mahsati. Who are you and how have you come to find us?”

She-Ra forces herself to ignore the hammering pressure of her beating heart and steps forward. “I am She-Ra, Princess of Power.” She fumbles at her belt and pulls out the wilting map, its creases deep from weeks of being folded and unfolded. “I came seeking Halfmoon after finding this map in the ruins of an ally’s home.”

The man nearest She-Ra reaches for the map and she hands it over. It’s passed around until it’s in Mahsati’s hands. She examines it with a scowl.

“And this ally was?”

“Madame Razz,” she answers. “I sought her help after I discovered Bright Moon under Horde rule. She was alive when the previous She-Ra was as well. I had hoped...I hoped that she could provide some answers about the state of the rebellion and even about the previous She-Ra, but I found nothing but that map and that message.”

“ _‘When all else fails, finds Halfmoon.’_ ” Mahsati glances up from the map. “This is an old map. From before our people moved underground. It has little use.”

“I know that now. I wouldn’t have found you all if it hadn’t been for one of the patrol bots.”

From her seat on the floor by Catra, Entrapta looks up. The little bot blinks at her wrist.

“I see,” answers Mahsati. She lowers herself to her seat, leaning back, hands steepled. “And what do you plan now that you’re here?”

“I…” She-Ra shifts her weight from foot to foot. Standing before them all, light filtering through the stained glass ceiling, she becomes viscerally aware of the twigs and leaves in her hair; the dirt on her face;  the ivory of her clothes grass stained. “I suppose I should try to decipher the meaning behind that message. And find the whereabouts of the Rebellion.”

“Halfmoon was once part of the Princess Alliance, long ago. We have since dissolved our allegiance. And our monarchy. There is little we can assist with.”  

Silence. She-Ra stands, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

Mahsati offers a smile, nothing more than a small twist of the mouth. “We can offer you few days refuge. And then you must leave.” A tilt of the head. “Is that all?”

She-Ra meets Catra’s stare across the room. Her mouth thins into a line. She nods.

“Then you are dismissed.”

 

*

 

“Mahsati doesn’t like anyone.”

She-Ra glances to the side. Beside her, Catra stands with her arms crossed and lips twisted in a frown. Without the headband to hold her bangs back, long strands of curling hair brush her cheeks.

“It doesn’t matter, anyways,” she says. “I didn’t come to be liked. I came for answers. For help.”

“For help.” Catra tilts her head, staring up at her. When she steps forward, beams of red and blue illuminate the freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose. “They’re...picky with that here.”

“What do you mean?”

“They accept refugees. You know, take them in, give them housing, help them get back on their feet. The patrol bots aren’t just to keep people out,” she says. “But they refuse to go out and actively search for them. And they won’t fight against the Horde.”

“So they’re neutral in the war?”

She scoffs. “Can’t be neutral if neither side knows you exist.”

“Hm.” This far down the hall, the voices in the meeting room fade away to nothing but a distant buzz. “Why’re Scorpia and Entrapta still in there?”

“Security and construction reports. They work close together on all that so.” She waves a dismissive hand in the general direction of the meeting room. “They stay. We go.”

She-Ra nods. She looks back at the dark tapestry covering the entire wall. Lean, elegant catlike figures dance across the fabric, tails long, ears perked. At the very center sits a women, a red headpiece at her crown.

“C’yra.” She turns to Catra. “She kept calling you C’yra.”

Nose crinkled, Catra reaches up and plucks a leaf from her hair. “Long story. Might be better when you don’t look like you’re competing against Princess Flower Power in a who wore nature best competition.”

Her cheeks warm. She steps back, smoothing at her hair. “Okay. Just — one last question.”

“Go for it.”

She stares at the locks of hair just barely brushing past the sharp line of Catra’s jaw; the hint of a prominent collarbone poking from the wide collar of her dress; that scar winking from the middle of her eyebrow. A reflection of a girl she knew, distorted, different.

“How long was I gone?”

Catra freezes. Her eyebrows draw together.

“Adora,” she says, slowly, “you’re joking, right?”

Her claws are out, long and black.

Down the hall, the voices lull to silence.

“Catra,” she says, “how long?”

The doors slam open. Entrapta and Scorpia are the first to step out, arms interlocked.

Frowning, Catra stares down at the floor. Her jaw clenches.

“Seven years.” She stuffs her hands into her pockets and starts down the hall. “You were missing for seven years.”

 

*

 

“There’s two sets of clothes for you in there,” Scorpia says. She offers an embarrassed smile, cheeks tinted pink. “We, uh, weren’t sure what would fit best considering,” she gestures towards her, “so just choose whichever.”

She-Ra blinks.

“For the record: You’re safe here.”

A pause. She stares.

“So just shout if you need anything. We’re just down the hall. Catra’s upstairs.”

Scorpia starts towards her room, pausing midway to turn and wave.

Inside, the crystals gradually come to life. The door clicks shut behind her and she stands, hands wringing at the skirted fabric above her shorts.

Everything looks — clean, smooth. The room is small, nothing to pay homage to, not like the glittering waterfall and crystalline bathtub in her Bright Moon room, but she still hesitates to touch the floral pink shower curtain; still goes ahead and sets her boots by the door, cheeks warming at the dirt tracked on the stone floor.

There’s fabric folded on the counter by the sink, soft reds and violets bright against the white surface. She runs her fingers over the glittering beads at the collar.

She breathes in. Out. She shuts her eyes. When they flutter open, she meets her reflection’s gaze and watches as she shrinks in on herself, shorter, shoulders thinner, hair wheat instead of golden. And she looks — different. Older. Cheekbones high, jaw defined — still her, still Adora, except her hair escaped the ponytail, her bangs brushing forward, all longer, past her shoulders and down her back.

She looks fine. She looks healthy, as if she ate and exercised and lived for seven years instead of slept in a castle with nothing but an ancient figure scolding and molding her in her head. Probably because of the runestone; because of She-Ra and her magic and how useless it would’ve been if Adora’s actual body wasted away while she trained to hone all those special destiny gifted powers.

Seven years. Nothing to show for it except to look shiny and new.

She reaches for the sword strapped to her back and speaks those magic words.

She-Ra looks back at her, leaves still in her hair.

 

*

 

_“It’s dying,” she says, fingers still deep in the sand. Her hands tremble. “Etheria’s dying.”_

_“It has been for centuries.” Light Hope stares down at her. Above them, the sky darkens, blanketing them in black, broken only by the white iridescent beams of moonlight._

_“The Horde did this. Hordak did_ — is _doing this. Why?”_

_“I do not know. Neither did Mara.”_

_Adora stiffens at the name. She remembers Mara screaming, blood on her hands, her sword._

_“What I do know is that only She-Ra can heal it.”_

_“How?” Adora struggles to her feet. Her knees shake. “It’s too much. The entire planet is broken. Everything. It’s so out of balance I can’t —” She presses a hand to her chest. Her heartbeat pounds, frantic, against her palm. “I don’t know how.”_

_Light Hope reaches forward. Her hand wavers where it should touch her shoulder. “You must connect to your runestone. Let go and let it wash over you. Just like you let Etheria. You must listen.”_

 

*

 

This deep underground, she loses track of the hours. Scorpia brings back bags and bags of food, meats and soups with spices unlike the tasteless drudge served in the Horde cafeteria or the chef tailored sweet snacks in the Bright Moon palace dining hall.  

Seated around the table like this, crammed together at the small table, She-Ra sits silent, her chest tight. She watches as Entrapta indulges in small food after food. She watches as Scorpia gulfs down everything on her plate. She watches as Catra tries not to glance at her from the corner of her eye, always looking away when their gazes meet.

Her stomach clenches tight. Her own plate sits half empty before her.

“Don’t you like it?” Scorpia asks.

She-Ra nods. “I do. Sorry. It’s really good. It’s just...I have to pace myself, I think.”

“You gotta try the desserts later, at least,” Entrapta says. She pops a cupcake into her mouth. “There’s this one bakery that makes the best mini cupcakes. I could take you there tomorrow after I finish up some of my experiments. Actually, I could take you for breakfast. That’s a better idea.”

Catra rolls her eyes. She rests her chin on one palm.  “Cupcakes for breakfast. You’re the epitome of healthy living.”

“Do you want to come too?”

“Depends how early you wanna drag me out of bed.”  

“How early would you want to get up, Adora?” Entrapta asks.

She-Ra pokes at her food with her fork. She shrugs, the loose fabric of her dress sliding soft along her shower warm skin. “I’m not sure yet. Early enough so that I can find somewhere to rest before nightfall, I guess.”

“Leaving so soon? The chancellor said you could stay for at least a few days,” Scorpia says. “We haven’t even gotten to give you a real tour of Dr’iluth yet.”

“And I haven’t taken you swimming!” Entrapta leans forward, frowning. “I told you I would!”

“It’s just,” She-Ra shifts in her seat, eyes falling to her hands, “I was gone long enough. I can’t really waste time when I should be searching for the Rebellion.”

“You don’t know where they are,” Catra says.

She shakes her head. “No. The Horde had Bright Moon when I checked.”

Across the table, Scorpia and Entrapta tense and glance at one another. She-Ra scowls.

“You guys knew, right?” Her eyebrows furrow. She nods towards Scorpia. “You were — you were apologizing. Why?” 

Silence.

“You haven’t explained anything,” she continues. “How you’re alive,” she points her fork at Entrapta and then at Catra and Scorpia, “or why you two aren’t with the Horde. How you guys even found Halfmoon.”

“I told you it was a misunderstanding,” Entrapta says.

“What the hell does that even mean? A misunderstanding? I thought you were _dead_.”

“You all did!” Her voice trembles. “That was the misunderstanding! You all thought I died when I didn’t. So you didn’t come back for me. I waited. None of you came back.”  

The fork clatters to the table’s surface. Entrapta stares down at her food, lip trembling. Silence falls over them all, Scorpia reaching out to place a claw on Entrapta’s shoulder, Entrapta leaning into the touch.

“It’s fine, now. It was a long time ago. And I made new friends,” a hand on Scorpia’s, a glance towards Catra, “and forgave my old ones.” And she looks at She-Ra now, smile small. “I still keep in touch with Bow.”

She-Ra’s heart stutters. “You do?”

“We talk as much as we can!” She grins, now, and fumbles at her pockets until she pulls out a circular flat device. It lights up and a projection flickers to life, a circle of different images spinning up in the air. “I can give you one. That way, when you leave, you don’t just disappear again.”

“I —” She-Ra shifts in her seat again. “Thank you, Entrapta. Really.” And then: “Could you put off telling Bow about me just yet?”

Entrapta’s eyebrows raise. “Sure. Why?”

“I just…don’t think it’d be best for him to find out like this.”

“Alright.” Entrapta shrugs. “Though I don’t see how that’ll improve your chances of finding him and the Rebellion.”

She-Ra scowls. “Don’t you know where he is?”

“They change locations frequently to avoid detection,” Entrapta answers. “Last we spoke he was in Plumeria, although I can’t be too sure that’s the new base.”

“That’s a lead, though.”

“I suppose,” Entrapta says, punctuative. If that weren’t enough to end the conversation, her turning back to her food is. Scorpia pushes a plate of mini-sandwiches towards her, smiling as Entrapta digs in. They talk amongst themselves.

But Catra —

Their eyes meet. She’s still sitting with her chin in hand, staring at her with eyes half lidded, as if bored.

“What?” She-Ra asks, scowling.

“Nothing,” Catra says. She holds her gaze, and blinks once, slow. “Nothing at all.”

 

*

 

Later, in the dead of night, She-Ra tosses and turns. The mattress holds firm-soft beneath her, comfortably hard, enough to keep her back straight. It reminds her of her bunk back at the barracks, reliable and sturdy, even if her limbs were a little too sore come morning.

Her feet hang off the edge of the bed despite curling up on her side. If she were Adora, she’d fit just fine, even if her older body stretches an inch or two taller than before. This body, though, makes sense; leaves her feather silent, her skin calm, no longer alight with frantic itching wrongness. It moves and bends and does as she says, just like she wants, just like it’s supposed to, even though sometimes she blinks and finds herself several yards ahead of where she once stood.

Yet she’s still awake.

She flops onto her back. The ceiling bears nothing but stone and stone and stone.

As silent as can be, She-Ra leaves the room, the door half open behind her. She tiptoes past Scorpia and Entrapta’s room, their snores light, and up the stairs. The third floor is moderately empty, only one room locked tight at the end of the hall and then twin doors leading to a wide balcony overlooking the rest of Dr’iluth.

The city rests in quiet. When she steps outside, the crystals blink at her. They had gradually dimmed until they resembled nothing but pinpricks of light in the dark. Like stars, almost. Not quite, but close enough to the images Light Hope conjured time and time again like a promise. She rests her arms on the stone railing, leaning forward, staring down at the empty streets, the sleeping markets down below. Her shoulders fall, the tense line loosening. She takes a deep breath.

“Stole my spot,” a familiar voice rises from behind.

She-Ra pivots around, hand reaching for the sword at her back.

Catra stands with her hands raised, trademark smirk curling at the corner of her mouth.

“We really gotta stop meeting like this.”

“Then stop sneaking up on me.”

“Hm.” Catra tilts her head. Her tail flicks up behind her. “That wouldn’t be any fun, though.”

She roll her eyes, letting go of the hilt.

“You ever go anywhere without that thing?” She climbs onto the railing and sits, feet swinging. She leans to the side, arm just barely grazing hers. “Seriously. It’s, like, three in the morning. You expecting armed forces to storm in or something?”

“You never know,” She-Ra replies.

“Right,” Catra scoffs. “Might as well put on the tiara and cape then, if you’re that paranoid.”

“I will if you do.”

Catra stiffens. Her face blanks, that teasing lilt shuttered and gone.

“That drawing,” She-Ra says, slowly, “with that woman in the center. She was wearing your headpiece.”

That slender tail, almost black in the dark, wraps around Catra’s waist.

“You three are keeping things from me. Like that name Mahsati kept calling you. And Bright Moon.”

“Not like we’re the only ones keeping secrets,” she replies.

She-Ra shakes her head. “If you ask, I’ll tell. I’m not hiding anything.”

“Seriously? You really expect me to believe that.” She gestures towards her with a flippant wave of the hand. “You haven’t turned back once. It’s the middle of the night and you’re basically two seconds away from sparkling.”

“I don’t sparkle!”

“Sorry, princess. I meant _glowing_.”

“Catra,” she groans, dragging her hands down her face. “Just work with me here. Can you do that? For once?”

“Fine. I’m an open book.”

She holds Catra’s stare, jaw clenched. “What happened to Bright Moon?”

“We invaded it,” she says. “Well, more like me and Scorpia did, but Entrapta made it possible.”

Her mouth dries.

“You never showed up. So it was easy. Mostly, I mean. Your friends showed up and took the Moon Stone away, which was what we were really after. But we got Bright Moon.” She blows a lock of hair away from her face. “I got promoted to second-in-command after that.”

“Congrats,” She-Ra says before she even thinks to, voice tight. “Must’ve been great.”

Catra shrugs. She scratches at her chin. “The workload was a pain, but gotta say the raise wasn’t too bad.”

“Me gone, Hordak’s respect. You got everything you wanted, huh?”

Catra shifts away, her arm no longer touching hers. The warmth lingers in the space between them.

She shrugs again and her gaze flits away to the ground below. “Sure.”

“But you still defected.”

“Astute observation skills. You learn that at princess camp?”

“Catra,” she sighs. “Just — why?”

“Does it matter?” She says it like an answer, which is how she always deflected. _Are you okay?_ met with a roll of the eyes; concern waved away with sarcasm and biting smirks. It’s so familiar that She-Ra’s throat tightens.

“Kind of, yeah.”

“I defected. I left. Isn’t that what you wanted?” Catra asks. “The reason doesn’t matter.”

“Guess I’m curious, then.” _Why I couldn’t convince you — Why I wasn’t enough._ She remembers: _I didn’t want you to come back._ “You were pretty set on staying.”

“Yeah, well,” she says, and her eyes glow, blue and gold brighter than the pseudo stars above them, “people surprise you.” A pause. She drags a leg up, hugging her knee. “C’yra’s my birth name. From before the Horde found me. It’s not — that’s it.  Nothing special.”

“You’re the one that said long story.”

A twist of a smile. “The name isn’t. Halfmoon, though…” She drags a hand through her mussed mane. “You still leaving tomorrow?”

She-Ra nods. “I can’t waste more time. I don’t even know how long I was out there looking for this place. And it’s just — It’s just a dead end, I guess.”

Frowning, Catra turns and hops off the railing. “Yeah, well, that happens sometimes.” She stuffs her hands into her pockets; starts heading back inside with only a tilt of the head back as she says, “See ya later, princess.”

 

*

 

_The days flutter past. Adora loses them to shut eyes, hands grounded in the dirt; to Etheria’s tired, soft whispering. The sword remains silent, unmoved by her pleas._

_On the tenth day_ — _or maybe fifteenth, or maybe more_ — _she throws it across the room with a yell. It clangs, loud._

_She drags her hands over her eyes; digs the heel of her palms into them as they burn._

_“Shouldn’t it_ want _to work with me?” she cries._

_Light Hope remains unchanged. “It does.”_

_“No it doesn’t! Otherwise Etheria would be healed already!” She wipes at her cheeks. “It doesn’t make any sense. Nothing’s working and Etheria’s dying and I’m_ — _“_

_“Still learning,” Light Hope says. “You cannot master these powers in a few days. It takes years.”_

_“We don’t have years. Etheria’s dying, and Glimmer’s glitching, and I can’t_ do _anything.”_

_“Perhaps…” Light Hope stares up. Adora follows and around them, images flicker past: a desert, stars streaking past the sky; Bright Moon Palace half built, surrounded by nothing but trees and trees; Madame Razz, younger, hair shorter, her hand in Mara’s as they stand before her hut in the Whispering Woods; a screaming, raging blizzard shaking the palace in the Kingdom of Snows; a cave with no outside light, only amber crystals and a set of blue and gold eyes glowing._

_Nothing sticks. Adora clenches her eyes shut, doubling over with her hands in her hair._

_“Stop. Stop!”_

_Everything goes white silent._

_When she opens her eyes, she stands in the center of a palace ballroom. Marble floors, golden pillars_ — _entirely unlike any of the ones she’s seen before._

_A throne, tall and silver, rises before her, a banner above it._

_She steps forward._

_“Grayskull.”_

 

*

 

“It relies on crystals from the caves to power it,” Entrapta says, pressing the circular device into She-Ra’s palm, “so it never has to be charged, and thus far it’s been reliable across thousands of kilometers. Bow and I haven’t encountered any issues in months since I last tinkered with it, so it should be fine wherever you go.”

“Right. And you really don’t know where Bow is?” she asks.

Entrapta shakes her head. “Like I said, they change locations far too often.”

The exit shines behind them. She-Ra glances at it, frowning. “I guess I’ll have to search around then.”

“Seems like it.” A pause. Entrapta sits with her hair propping her up, gnawing at the inside of her cheek. “Keep in touch, Adora.”

She smiles. “I will.”

 

*

 

The moon's light beats hot and heavy. Her ivory clothes, only clean again for a few hours, soak in sweat after only half an hour trekking through the jungle. The communicator, her cape, and tiara sit inside the duffle bag, nestled between the new clothes Scorpia stuffed into her hands.

She stops by a river when the third moon peaks at its highest. It’s then, when she’s sitting beneath a tree’s shade, chugging at her water, when she hears it:

A twig snapping. Leaves rustling.

She pulls out her sword and blasts a burst of energy as she turns. The tree behind her snaps in half.

“For fuck’s sake,” Catra says, crouched on all fours a few yards away, spine curved. “Watch it!”

“Catra?” She lowers the sword. “What’re you doing here?”

She grins, standing to full height. She pulls at the strap of her own bag. “Got bored. Figured I join you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for all the support last chapter!! i couldn't reply to every comment, but i appreciated each and every one of them. 
> 
> i'm posting this kinda late and without editing so uh sorry for any and all typos.


	3. tethered bones

_[i'm forested / with tethered bones / you’re faceless when you sleep / don't ever bare it all](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFVpFJjrOY4) _

 

 

“You don’t even like the Rebellion,” She-Ra says.

Catra replies, “Got me there,” hopping onto a branch and shaking off a handful of fruits onto the ground. She-Ra catches them, scowling up at Catra.

“You really expect me to believe that you’re just tagging along because you’re bored.”

“Yup.”

“I don’t buy it.”

“That’s your problem then.” Catra leaps onto a different tree branch, thicker than the last. It wobbles under her weight and she freezes until it stills. Her claws extend. She-Ra turns away the second she catches sight of the poor rodent-like creature.

Ignoring the scuffling from above, She-Ra settles the fruits by their bags and sits with her back against the rough tree bark. The river beside them streams along, calm and quiet. She focuses her breathing on matching the glimmering waves until the knot in her chest loosens.

Catra plops onto the ground a few yards away and holds up two small animals by their tails.

“I caught lunch.”

She-Ra sighs.

 

*

 

“So. Plumeria?” Catra asks through a mouthful of...whatever they’re eating. She-Ra didn’t bother to ask. She’s eaten enough questionable things on her journey to Halfmoon. Its skin is crunchy, and warm, and the meat so fatty that grease slathers all over her chin and cheeks.

She-Ra nods. “Plumeria. That’s my only lead.”

“After Bright Moon,” Catra says, peeling one long strip of meat from the rest of the food, “they were scrambling for a new base. Like Entrapta said, they moved around a lot. Helped them avoid getting attacked by,” she meets She-Ra’s eyes, face artfully blank, “well, us. We always found them anyways, so I’m really your best chance.”

“My hero,” She-Ra says, flat. Catra grins. “Is that why you ambushed me? Chivalry?”

“Obviously. Every princess needs a knight in shining armor.”

“Unfortunately mine’s covered in rodent guts.”

“It put up a fight. You should be fawning over my courageous win against the feral beast.”

“A little hard to when I’m not sure which ones which.”

“Ouch.” Catra presses a hand to her chest. “I’m wounded. Who knew a fair maiden could deal such harmful blows.”

The corner of She-Ra’s mouth twitches. She clears her throat. “How’d you always find them?”

“The Princess Alliance only had seven princesses. You never had a kingdom. Sparkles lost hers. That left only five other kingdoms to go through.”

Her breath catches. “So the Horde —”

“Relax. We only took over, like, three out of six total. Actually, more like two. We only managed to get Salineas for a year. Then they beat us out.”

She-Ra sighs.

Catra licks at a rolling drop of grease at her wrist. “We weren’t too upset over it anyways. The Rebellion was tanked and Hordak was more interested in Entrapta’s First Ones research than just terrorizing a bunch of civilians. So I only saw your friends a few times anyways.”

“Why would he stop expanding the Horde?” She-Ra asks.

“I don’t think he ever really cared about it in the first place.”

“What do you mean?”

“You noticed how he let Shadow Weaver and the Force Captains do all his dirty work, right?” Catra frowns. “He just stayed in that creepy throne room of his and pet that gross imp.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“It grew a bit, last I saw it.”

“Ew.”

Smiling, Catra finishes the last bit of the meat. “Right, well, I’m pretty sure he started the Horde anyways for this kind of research. That expanding and taking over villages and kingdoms was always about searching for _something_.”

A sort of creeping numbness crawls along She-Ra’s arms. She’s careful to keep her face impassive; to keep eating even as her jaw starts to ache.

 

*

 

_“This is Castle Grayskull,” Light Hope says, flickering to life beside her._

 

*

 

“He never told me what,” Catra says. “Not that I really bothered to ask him. He just kept throwing a bunch of grunt work at me.”

 

*

 

_Adora turns to Light Hope, chest aching. The sword, still laying restless across the ground, shines in the low evening light filtering through the high glass windows, its runestone glittering bright, like it belongs amongst the golds and silvers in the room._

_“This is where the sword came from,” she says, quiet. Her voice echoes. She regards the throne, stepping forward with a hand outstretched._

_“Correct,” Light Hope answers. “Perhaps you are unable to connect because you do not yet understand its origins.”_

_Adora runs her fingers over the top of the throne, frowning. “You’d think this sort of place would be on a map or something.”_

 

*

 

“Not that it mattered, in the end.” Catra throws the bones into the dying embers. She sucks at the grease on a finger. “After we left, he just...went quiet. Stopped with all the sieges anyways.” She goes quiet, contemplative. It sits odd on her.

 

*

 

_“This is Eternia,” Light Hope says. “It would be not be on any Etherian map.”_

_“Wait. Like from the Crystal Castle’s entrance?_ That _Eternia?”_

_“Correct.”_

 

*

 

“How long has it been since you left?” She-Ra asks. She hands Catra the rest of her food, stomach churning.

“Not sure,” Catra replies. She gnaws at the meat, eyebrows furrowed. “Three? Four years? Somewhere around there.” She shrugs a thin shoulder, bare from the long sleeves she wore the day before. The red and black tight fitting jumpsuit suits her better. “Kinda hard to keep track when you’re spending all that time in a giant magic cave.”

They sit in silence, She-Ra staring off at the river while Catra finishes the last bit of meat and sucks at the bones. Sweat collects at She-Ra hairline, her brow, rolling down her back. She stands and stomps out the fire.

“So he hasn’t done anything.”

Catra shakes her head. “Nothing unusual. There’s still squadrons pillaging villages and children stolen for the army, but nothing as big as The Siege of Bright Moon.”

Frowning, She-Ra digs the heel of her boot against the ashes. A tiny bone snaps under her weight. “Don’t you think that’s strange?”

Catra’s slow to stand, body lithe and lean and long as she stretches to full height, raising her arms above her head. “No duh. He’s clearly buying his time with something.” She glances at She-Ra.

She-Ra looks back at the wood beneath her feet. She clears her throat. “Clearly.” The fire finally out, she wipes her hands on a bit of tree bark and reaches for their bags. She throws Catra’s to her and slings the straps of her own onto her shoulders. “Let’s go. We have to find shelter before nightfall.”

 

*

 

They travel in silence. It’s familiar. It’s foreign. The two facts oscillate, and meet, and touch, unable to lie still. She-Ra bites her tongue and continues on, trekking at the same speed she had before. Above her, Catra leaps from tree to to tree until they reach a clearing. Even then she keeps her space.

She-Ra stomps along.

By the time they reach the outskirts of a village, long past the eerie jungle shielding Halfmoon, the third moon has started to set. The village is small, quant, like Thaymor so long ago, with small huts and shops sprinkled across the rolling hills.

They settle by the same river, further west. The night blankets over them. Moonlight streams in steady light, casting Catra in shadows.

She-Ra settles by a tree trunk. Catra climbs a tree. In the dark, She-Ra can’t make out Catra’s frame amongst the foliage, but she thinks she catches the glow of blue and gold breaking through, staring right back.

She wonders what Catra sees: a friend turned foe returned from the dead or She-Ra, weary and tired, entirely unlike what the legends foretold.

Unbidden, she wonders if maybe she sees Adora.

 

*

 

“It’s going to take forever by foot,” Catra says the next morning.

She-Ra hands her a can of beans. “Not like we have any skiffs to sneak out.”

Catra pops open the lid using a claw. “And that’s where you’re wrong.” She slurps at the contents. A drop of water rolls down her chin. She finishes and wipes at it. “Think about it, genius. The Horde’s taken over a ridiculous amount of land. You really think there won’t be any bases around if we look hard enough?”

“Most of the villages I’ve passed have been fine.”

“Because they don’t matter.”

She-Ra hums in agreement. “So you want to steal a skiff.”

“Just like old times.”

With a pop, She-Ra finally manages to open her own can. She frowns down at the beans, then at Catra. “Just like old times.”

 

*

 

It takes two days to find a Horde base. Two days of Catra’s silence except at meals, and even then it’s idle chatter, nothing more than jokes about the state of their food — “Still better than the grub they spat out in the Fright Zone” — or commentary about the slowly shifting landscape.

It’s nothing like what She-Ra had been expecting. She reminds herself she had been expecting nothing.

The base is small, nowhere near the size of the one once stationed outside Plumeria. The guards rotate in shifts of one or two per dome. They watch them for all of a day and take note of the relief times, the squadrons coming and going.

“They must’ve pissed off some shitty Force Captain,” Catra says, once, biting into an unnamed fruit they found earlier. “This is literally the most boring job ever.”

“That just means they won’t see us coming,” She-Ra says.

Catra grins. “All the more fun.”

 

*

 

In the end, it’s easier than they thought. During a gap in between shifts, they creep onto the base. A hazy, churning silence finds them. The slinking green is familiar; so is sneaking around with Catra at her side. It sits wrong at She-Ra’s stomach.

The building is small: Once they make it down one long, winding hall, they reach the main room. Its beating heart rests center, six cloying tubes of tarlike chemicals in a circle, doors between each one leading to different halls. A control panel with various blinking buttons rests on the jutting platform that makes up the second floor.

“Which one leads to the hangars?” Catra asks.

She-Ra shrugs. She taps her fingers against her thigh. The tubes churn along.

“We can’t split up,” she says.

To which Catra replies with a resounding, “Duh.”

She resists the urge to shove Catra. Instead, she starts for the stairs leading up the platform. Up here, she makes out through the windows the branching halls leading to various other small domes.

Catra stands beside her, frowning. She runs her claws lightly over the blinking buttons on the control panel until she reaches a particularly bright violet one and then presses it.

A projection flares to life above them. Twelve different screens flicker on, showing empty rooms, guards switching places, and most importantly: the hangar filled with tanks and a skiff.

Catra smirks up at She-Ra. She-Ra shoves at Catra’s shoulder.

A loud beep echoes through the room.

They freeze. She-Ra turns, slowly, eyes landing on the door behind them, the light above it switching from red to green. It slides open, revealing a Horde soldier, mask slid up onto their head, a cup of coffee in hand. Their blaster hangs uselessly at their side.

“What’d I tell you?” Catra says. The guard yelps and drops their coffee. They scramble for their blaster. Catra surges forward; kicks their feet out beneath them. She grabs the blaster and uses its handle to knock them out. “Most boring job ever.”

“Ha, ha.” She-Ra turns the guard over with her foot. She crouches down and searches their pockets until — “Found it!” She holds up their keys. She grins up at Catra. “You don’t think they’ll get in too much trouble, do you?”

Catra snorts. “Whoever’s running this place won’t give a shit.” And then she scowls. She crosses the platform again, regarding the control panel with the skin between her brows pinched until she presses a few buttons, types out a few words — “Cool. Let’s go.”

“What’d you do?”

“You don’t really want any video surveillance picking up that She-Ra is back, right?” Catra rolls her eyes and starts down the hall the guard came from. “That’d wake Hordak up.”

She-Ra frowns. She nudges the guard again with the tip of her boot. They groan, but remain supine. She follows after Catra.

The hall stretches rigid and straight, a singular path down to their destination. No other guard comes after them. There’s three tanks lined up dead center, cold to touch. Near the open entrance: the singular skiff.

“I’m driving,” She-Ra says right as Catra opens her mouth. She ignores Catra’s indignant _“Hey!”_ and hops onto the skiff. The engine roars to life, the floor beneath their feet buzzing, and they take off.

 

*

 

“When you said you’d drive,” Catra says sometime later, sprawled on her back across the skiff’s floor, “I didn’t think you’d go slower than Kyle running laps.”

 

*

 

The map, old as it is, still charts the mountains, the deserts, the forests accurately. The villages and kingdoms might’ve changed and disappeared and moved in the past one thousand years, but whoever painstakingly drew Etheria’s land so long ago knew the natural layout with an expert eye.

It only takes consulting with Catra for the better part of the morning to orient themselves on the current geography. Plumeria, so far out east, remains a distant goal. Even with a half-fueled skiff, they’d never make it as quick as She-Ra would like.

“Don’t know what to tell you, princess,” Catra says. “You already waited this long to crawl back from wherever the hell you were. What’s a few more weeks going to cost you?”

She-Ra forces a breath through her nose. Her nostrils flare. The skiff sits silent and idle where they stopped somewhere in the depths of the mountains. She sits on its floor, back pressed against the steering handle’s platform, and scowls.

“Thanks for the reminder,” she replies.

“You know me: Always glad to be of help.”

“Is that what you call being a pain in the ass?”

The corner of Catra’s mouth twitches. She tilts her head to the side and leans back on her elbows, legs sprawled out before her. “Oh, Adora. Everything I’ve learned I’ve learned from you or Shadow Weaver.”

Somewhere, miles and miles away, Light Hope must be scowling. She-Ra can practically hear the scolding for every shove and quip. It’s still not enough to stop her from throwing an apple’s core at Catra.

It bounces off Catra’s forehead. “Oh, the _agony_.” Catra falls onto her back and slings an arm over her eyes. “I’ve been hit! Someone, please, call a medic. Tell Scorpia I’ve always hated the shower curtains.”

“Haunting last words. I’ll make sure to pass the message along.”

Catra shifts her arm up slightly. She peeks one eye open. “It’s my dying wish. You’d better.”

“I’m nothing if not respectful towards the dead.” She-Ra brushes back her hair. Even at ground level, gusts of wind blow at the locks, fluttering them towards her face. The third moon's heat beats down at them, tinting her arms and legs pink. She imagines her cheeks just the same. She crinkles her nose at Catra. “But whatever will I do with the body?”

“As long as you don’t feed me to some princess, I don’t really care.”

“You’re right. I should donate your body to science instead. Entrapta’s gonna have a blast.”

“Ugh.” Catra sits up and kicks at She-Ra’s ankle. “Don’t even joke about that. You know she wouldn’t hesitate.”

“Glimmer told me that she wanted to cut me open once.”

“She wouldn’t be the first one.”

“Never took you for a scientist.”

“Never took you for a smartass.”

She-Ra pushes herself up. She links her hands together and stretches them forward, palms out. Her knuckles crack. “Then you weren’t paying attention.”

“I paid attention plenty,” Catra says. Her eyes trail from She-Ra’s feet to her face. She-Ra’s face burns. The moon is _really_ bright. “And I can say, with all the confidence in the world, that you’ve always been an idiot.”

“Yeah, well,” she replies, “idiots flock together.”

Catra laughs, loud, and bright, and unabashed. It sparks something unnamed under She-Ra’s skin. It sits familiar. Before she thinks too long and hard about it, she makes her way to the skiff’s controls.

“So,” she says, drawing out the syllable, “desert time?”

“You’re joking,” Catra says. “You realize we’re low on gas, right?”

She-Ra raises an eyebrow. “Since when has that ever stopped you?”

“It’s called not having a death wish.” Catra gathers the map and folds it. Standing up, she tucks it into her belt. “We’re low on water, low on those gourmet cans of yours, and low on supplies. Have you been through the desert before?”

She-Ra forces out a deep breath. She shakes her head.

“Well, I have. It’s not fun.”

“So we’re gonna waste more time going around then.”

“Now you’re impatient to get back, huh?”

It’s like a slap to the face. She-Ra’s jaw clenches. She says, carefully, voice level, “You realize I was gone because you let me fall off a cliff, right?”

“Oh, man, I almost forgot. Glad to know you haven’t.”

Her hands tighten into fists at her sides. She breathes in; breathes out. “If we cut through at top speed, we can make it through the desert in a day or two. We can leave the skiff once we’re out and go on foot.”

Catra scoffs. “I was mostly joking about you being an idiot, but now you’re really trying to change my mind, aren’t you?”

“It’s a solid plan.”

“Except we’ll be out a skiff.”

“Then we get another!” She throws her hands up. “You’re the one that came along. This is my mission, so we’re doing what _I_ say. _We’re going through the stupid desert_.”

Catra stares at her, arms crossed over her chest, lips twisted in a scowl. Her nose twitches. “Wow,” she deadpans. “Sure did miss you.”

She-Ra ignores her. She starts the engine.

 

*

 

The engine stalls halfway through the desert. Of course it does. She-Ra shakes the steering handle until a loud, metallic groan forces her to stop.

Catra, sitting at the head of the skiff, shoots her a look.

“Shut up,” She-Ra says.

“I didn’t say anything,” Catra answers.

“I said,” She-Ra manages through gritted teeth, “ _shut up_.”

Which, surprisingly, Catra does, though she keeps looking at She-Ra, annoyingly smug and composed, and She-Ra’s pretty sure that a few years ago the situation would be reversed. It’s supposed to be Catra two seconds away from tearing the skiff apart, not She-Ra with her seven — _seven!_ — years of mystical, magical training under her belt. Light Hope would be disappointed.

Ignoring the stare borderline drilling into the back of her skull, She-Ra turns the keys in the ignition. The engine stutters. She tries again. It coughs. She tries again. It dies.

“So, how long till one of us snaps and tries to eat the other?”

“Catra,” says She-Ra.  

“You’re right. Joking about cannibalism is just distasteful.”

She-Ra turns to look at Catra. Catra smirks. Without another word, She-Ra throws the keys towards Catra. She gathers her bag and hops off the skiff.

“Guess we’re walking,” she says.

 

*

 

The air is dry. It’s easier to ignore while traveling at top speed on a skiff. Now, trekking up a particularly tall sand dune, it’s impossible not to notice. The Fright Zone seeped a different heat: a wet, suffocating one, similar to the humid jungle air, with fumes rising and curling in the air. It was worse. It was home.

If it were any other situation, She-Ra might stop to admire the swirling desert colors; the rising sand dunes and sand formations; the glittering dry lakes beneath the shining moons. She stomps through the desert, instead, cheeks growing redder and redder with every passing minute, her hair sticking to the back of her neck. Suddenly, viscerally, she misses the mountains and the cool, rapid winds that sent her mass of hair fluttering around her head.

Catra trudges alongside She-Ra. She seems — fine, like she’s not two seconds away from chugging at their dwindling water. Her hair, thick and short, sticks up in odd tufts at random directions, and her freckles grow darker with every passing hour, and her eyes are half-lidded, bored. She rarely glances at She-Ra, which She-Ra barely notices, obviously, because it’s hot, and dry, and she’s too busy being two seconds away from reaching into her bag and downing every last water bottle stuffed in between her clothes and tiara to care about Catra.

They take short breaks, here and there: Silent ones, hands notably never brushing as they hand each other food, water. By the time the third moon begins to set, alighting the sand with rays of pink and gold, and they settle on a tall plateau, She-Ra counts around only three cans of food in her bag.

“I have...half an apple.” Catra holds up a browning, half eaten apple. She turns it over in her hand. “And water.”

“Great,”  She-Ra says. “Awesome. That’ll last us.”

“Yeah, the apple’s enough to get me through at least a week. It’s a three course meal.”

“Anyone ever tell you you aren’t funny?”

Catra presses a hand to her chest. “That hurts. Here I thought you princesses were supposed to be kind.”

She-Ra narrows her eyes at Catra. She scoffs. She rustles through her bag until she pulls out her cape and the few blankets she managed to scavenge from Razz’s home. The temperature’s dropping, littering goosebumps all over her arms, even with all the magic radiating through her limbs to keep her warm.

Wrapped up, tight and cozy, she sits and watches as Catra pulls on the same burgundy dress she wore back at Halfmoon; as she tugs the sleeves over her hands and pulls on the loose pants over her thin leggings. The claws at her feet retract and she slips on soft-looking black slippers.

“I don’t think,” She-Ra says, “I’ve ever seen you wear shoes.”

Catra sticks out her tongue. She plops down across from She-Ra, and pulls out a familiar fraying navy blanket. She-Ra freezes. She watches as Catra wraps it around her thin shoulders. A loose thread settles by her neck.  

She-Ra shakes off one of her blankets. “You’re gonna freeze with that old thing,” she says, offering it towards her.

Catra’s eyes dart from her face, to the blanket, and back again. She takes it.

The moon disappears beyond the horizon. She-Ra clutches the blankets tighter around her shoulders. The sand beneath them is hard, and cold, and not the least bit comfortable, like the bunks back at the cadets’ barracks. Catra, so close to her, settles in fine, already curled up and half asleep. If She-Ra scoots forward just a bit, Catra would be pressed against her feet.

She stays in place. She settles on her side and falls asleep.

 

*

 

_In the dead of night, Catra wakes Adora. “I can’t sleep,” she mutters into the blankets wrapped around her tiny frame, mismatched eyes wide and bright and wet in the dark._

_Adora, somewhere between four or five years old, rubs at one eye with the heel of her palm. She scoots aside and pulls up the navy blanket. Catra clammers onto the bed. She curls up against Adora. Adora sighs. She wraps her arms around Catra._

_“I’ll wake you up in the morning,” she whispers into the mass of Catra’s hair._

_A soft purr answers._

_“I’m serious.”_

_Catra snuggles up closer to Adora. Adora is warm, and cozy, and sleepy. Her eyes shut. Catra nuzzles against her neck. Their feet tangle together. A tail curls loosely around Adora’s ankle. “Okay.”_

 

*

 

When She-Ra wakes to the rising dawn, a still sleeping Catra has her tail wrapped around her ankle.  

 

*

 

“What happened to your headpiece?” She-Ra asks.

The moon peaks high above them. Sweat collects at She-Ra’s brow. Trudging beside her, Catra huffs.

“Why?”

“I have a sudden interest in fashion,” she answers.

Catra narrows her eyes at She-Ra. She kicks at some sand. It rises patternless in the air before falling. “I still have it.”

She-Ra pauses, regarding the particularly tall, rising sand dunes around them, shielding her eyes with one hand. “So?”

“So, what?” Catra groans. When She-Ra looks, Catra’s glaring at her, arms crossed over her chest.

“So,” she says, slowly, “that tapestry back in Halfmoon —”

“— Lots of tapestry back there.”

She-Ra raises an eyebrow. “The one with your headpiece.”

 _“Uuuuuuuuuuuuugh.”_ Catra throws her head back. “Who cares? It’s dumb. Art is dumb. That ugly overhyped headband is dumb.” She-Ra stares. Catra glares. “Fine. Shadow Weaver stole it from the magicats whenever it was that she kidnapped me. There. Are you happy?”

She-Ra shrugs. “I don’t know. Are you?”

Catra scowls. She speeds up and walks ahead of She-Ra. She slinks away, fast and efficient, even the elegant line of her arm as she sweeps her hair back from her face familiar.

“I’m serious,” she says.

“You always are,” Catra replies. She looks back over her shoulder. She-Ra takes two big steps and catches up. “What about this time?”

“Are you happy?”

The laugh that follows shouldn’t hurt. She-Ra watches, face carefully impassive, as Catra clutches at her belly and doubles over.

“Really?” Catra wipes at her eyes with the heel of her palm. “We’re lost in the middle of the biggest desert in all of Etheria with, like, two water bottles and one can of probably expired beans, and you’re asking me if I’m happy?”

If She-Ra’s cheeks go warm, she blames it on the heat. “I don’t mean — Not right now, obviously. I mean in general. When you’re home, with Scorpia and Entrapta.”

Catra snorts. Her cheeks are still pink with laughter. “Does it matter?”

“Yeah, it does.” She-Ra reaches out, but she stops herself, fingers curling towards her palm as she drops her arm. “I spent all that time hoping you’d leave the Horde and you did.”

Catra glances at She-Ra’s hand. She frowns. And then: “It had nothing to do with you.” She turns and continues walking.

“I’m not saying it did.” She-Ra scrambles after her. She tugs the strap of her bag higher up her shoulder. “You don’t even have to tell me why. I just — I just want to know. That’s all.”

“You and your bleeding heart.”

She-Ra blinks. She blinks again. “Didn’t know that was a bad thing.”

“Yeah, well, most people with a giant martyr complex wouldn’t think so.”

“I don’t — I —” She-Ra sputters. She stops. Catra pauses, turning halfway to look back with an eyebrow raised. “I don’t have a _martyr complex_.”

“Oh, my bad. Guess I’ll go reevaluate our entire childhood.”

“Seriously?”

Catra shrugs. “I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: You always had to play the hero. That’s just a fact of life.” She presses a hand to her chest. “Don’t worry, though, I’m not mad anymore. I accept that about you.”

She-Ra, scowling, deadpans, “Gee, thanks.” To which Catra grins and shoots back a cheerful, “No problem.”

They continue walking. There’s not a single cloud in the sky: Only endless blue, and blue, and blue.

“I was never trying to play the hero, you know,” says She-Ra, because of course she can’t let it go. Light Hope with her infinite and advanced technological wisdom, a giant magic sword, and She-Ra’s still splintering after one jab from Catra.

Catra rolls her eyes. “Blah, blah, you were only trying to protect me. I know. I heard it the first time.”

She-Ra’s chest threatens to choke her out. “Yeah, and then you let me fall.”

It shouldn’t matter. She-Ra hasn’t thought about it in what she now knows are years. But Catra stiffens, the line of her back straight, and her ears flick back.

“Yeah, well,” says Catra, “you lived.”

“Barely.”

Catra snaps around. “What?”

“I — No. No, I was fine. I meant.” She-Ra blows at an errant strand of hair at her face. Catra stares at her, expression wavering somewhere near concern, and it strikes She-Ra hot and hard. She shakes her head. “Nothing.”

Whatever worry Catra might’ve held shutters. She sniffs. “What even happened to you after that?”

“I stayed,” She-Ra answers. “I had to train my powers, so I stayed at the Crystal Castle.”

“You really never left?” Catra asks. “You know that everyone looked everywhere. Sparkles and the other one practically went nuts searching for you.”

“Glimmer and Bow,” She-Ra corrects, and then shuts her mouth. They pass a glimmering dry lake. Sand and rocks and more sand stretch around them.

Catra stops and reaches inside her bag for her water. She uncaps it and says, before taking a long gulp, “Yeah, them.” She wipes at her mouth with her forearm. “They thought I kidnapped you for a while, which was totally stupid because I would’ve bragged about it.”

She-Ra’s almost compelled to grab Catra’s shoulder and shake and ask for more about them, about Catra too, but she stays her hand and sips at her own water, carefully. She stuffs it back in her bag.

“It’s not that bad of a theory,” she says, instead.

Catra hums in agreement. “Whatever. Clearly they didn’t look hard enough.”

“But they looked.” Her voice comes out smaller than it should. She-Ra swallows down the thick lump in her throat.

“They’re the greatest friends ever.” Catra rolls her eyes. “You’ll see them soon, and then I can go home and not deal with all this magic bullshit ever again.”

She-Ra lets out an exasperated noise. “You’re the one that came along because you were _bored_.”

“And I was. You saw the place. A girl needs excitement, sometimes, but getting stuck with you here? Not my idea of a good time.”

“Then you shouldn’t have come.”

Catra shoots her a _look_. “Maybe I shouldn’t have.”

“Then why did you?” She-Ra’s voice wavers. She forces herself to stand straight; to push back her shoulders; stare down at Catra with a blank face, even though her face burns, her neck burns. “I don’t buy this whole nonchalant _‘Oh, I was bored’_ charade of yours. How do I even know that you just aren’t messing with me again?”

Catra snorts. “You’re joking, right?”

She-Ra says nothing.

“Wow. Wow! You aren’t.” Catra shakes her head. Her hair springs around her head. “You know what? Whatever. I stay with the Horde and I’m the bad guy. I defect and I’m still the bad guy. I get it.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“You didn’t have to.”  

“Maybe, just maybe, I’m stuck on the fact last time we saw each other you left me for dead,” She-Ra says. Her mouth twists. “So sorry if that makes it a little hard to trust you.”

Catra laughs, a singular noise, one that bursts and fizzles just as quick. “Oh, man, I was wondering how long it’d take you to get into that.”

“Then you should’ve brought it up.”

“Wasn’t my place.”

She-Ra — Adora sputters. “Wasn’t — _Wasn’t your place?_ You could’ve apologized at any point!” Her hands — and this time they’re her hands, smaller and calloused and slender, _hers_ — clench into fists at her sides. “You had way more than enough time to do it.”

Catra’s eyes search Adora’s face. Whatever she finds leaves her mouth twisted, and Adora’s chest aches. “Is that all you want? An apology?”

“I don’t know,” says Adora. She wants to curl into a little ball. She wants to turn away from Catra’s knowing eyes. She wants to shake Catra. She can’t seem to move. “It’d be nice.”

Catra meets Adora’s stare without hesitation. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

It’s a punch to the chest. “I didn’t ask you to come with me!” Adora yells. “You’re the one that followed me! You!”

“I owed you one, okay?” says Catra, furiously calm.  

“Oh, because suddenly you’re the epitome of fairness, right?”

“Because I thought you were _dead._ ” Catra steps forward, one hand to her chest. “I left you there. I was the last person that saw you. And I thought you were dead.”

Adora shoves at Catra’s shoulders. “That’s what you wanted!” Her voice is shaking. She shoves again. Her eyes burn. “You wanted me gone. You wanted me dead. So you don’t get to just — just keep acting like this when you’re the one that keeps making it worse between us!”

“I never _wanted_ you gone, you idiot.” Catra doesn’t push, or shove, or even shout. She stands, poised and controlled, and it feels wrong, like something Adora’s imagined. She stares at Adora, brows drawn, and steps forward, and steps forward, until their chests press together. Adora should back off. She freezes in place. “You idiot. That place was made for you, wasn’t it? For all the She-Ras or what-fucking-ever. It was never going to let you die. I just wanted space to _breathe_.”

“Well I’m sorry I was so goddamn suffocating.”

“God, you’re so —” Catra steps back. Her eyes are wild. The swell of her chest moves up and down with every panting breath, as if they just finished another Horde simulation. Adora drags her eyes away. “You’re so _stupid_.”

Catra walks away. Adora watches. She clenches and unclenches her fists. Her heartbeat throbs at her throat, her ears, and only after a solid beat of silence does she realize her own rapid breaths.

 

*

 

Adora sheds the jacket and shirt at some point through the day. Her shirt, still bearing the Horde symbol, pulled too tight across the shoulders anyways, and like this, like herself, no magic courses through her limbs to regulate her body temperature. In her white Horde-issued breast guard, sword strapped across her back, she stomps ahead of Catra, pointedly not talking to her, and pointedly not noticing Catra pointedly not talking too.

She considers turning back, except She-Ra’s hunger burns hotter than her own, and so she stays, skin itching wrong, wrong, wrong.

Eventually, finally, vegetation breaks through the sand. Adora and Catra glance at one another and walk faster. A shrub. A bed of wild flowers. And then, hours later, skeletal trees give way to more and more trees, gradually lush with life, until:

“Is that a stream?” Adora croaks.

Catra runs ahead.

The stream is shallow, and thin, and warm. Catra stuffs her face in the water and starts lapping at it. Adora hesitates, mouth dry, before stepping back to gather wood. It only takes a few minutes before she starts a low fire.

“What,” says Catra, face and hair dripping water, “the hell are you doing?”

Adora says, “My stomach isn’t like yours. I can’t just drink water like that.”

Once she’s purified more than enough water and let it cool, she drinks until her stomach bulges, until her chin and neck and chest are soaked. At some point Catra sneaks off and returns with four squirrels of varying sizes.

They eat and drink until they both collapse onto their backs by the dying fire.

“You know,” Adora starts, “eating that much was probably a bad idea.”

Catra replies, “Probably.”

Adora gnaws at the inside of her cheek. “Yelling at you probably was too.”

Silence answers her. She turns her head and catches sight of Catra staring up at the darkening sky.

“Letting you fall off that cliff definitely was,” Catra says. “I am sorry. For that. For a lot.”

Adora presses a palm flat against the dirt and pushes herself up. Catra turns her head. Their eyes meet.   

“Yeah. Me too.” And then, before Adora can stop herself, before she thinks too long about it: “I missed you.”

Catra stiffens. Her jaw clenches. Something unnamed and unfamiliar flashes too quick across her face, and then she’s scrambling up and running towards the trees. She doubles over. She throws up.

“I’m never,” groans Catra, “eating squirrel again.”

 

*

 

Days later, they steal another skiff. They sneak in and out without disruption, or argument, or need to attack an otherwise clueless guard. The video surveillance footage is erased — _Catra, rolling her eyes: “I’ve been stuck with Entrapta for years. You really think I didn’t pick up anything?_ — and Adora, dressed in Razz’s pink sweater, throws Catra the keys.

“The tank is full,” she says, hopping onto the skiff. “Just don’t crash it.”

Catra grins. The engine roars to life. “No promises.”

 

*

 

It’s simple to sit back and navigate Catra through the transformative landscape; to keep her limbs her own, even if her skin itches bright hot to change back; to actually observe Etheria instead of sloughing through the land with her eyes focused on a singular point. She thinks Light Hope would be disappointed. She thinks Light Hope must know. The knowledge picks at her like the bug bites lining her arms.

Still, Adora knots her hair as much as she can against the back of her neck. She continues. They hunt for food; they sleep where they can. The days tick past.

“Did you ever meet Perfuma?” she asks.

Catra, hands on the steering handle, glances at Adora. “A few times. Pain in the ass, but she’s cute.”

Adora blinks. Her face burns. The map crinkles in her hands. “Oh. Oh, uh. Yeah. She is.” She pauses. “Cute, I mean. Not a pain in the ass.”

Catra snorts. “Agree to disagree then.”

She sets the map down on the metal floor and smooths it over. She clears her throat. “Right. Anyways. We should reach Plumeria soon if we keep at this speed. Considering your,” she glances up at Catra, “last job, you’re gonna have to be on your best behavior.”

“I’m offended.” Catra presses a hand to her chest. “I have nothing but the best manners. _I’m_ not the one that fucked up at the All Princesses Ball.”

“You literally blew up the palace.”

“Technically that was Scorpia, Lonnie, and Kyle.”

Adora rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Just. Be less —” She waves a hand at Catra. “Perfuma’s nice. We don’t wanna scare her off.”

“I’d never scare a princess.”

Adora stares. Catra grins.

Just as Adora opens her mouth to retort, Catra’s face falls. Her eyes widen. Adora scowls and turns around. Her heart stutters.

Tanks litter the ground. Browning vines and branches and flowers wrap around them. Trees lie forgotten on the ground, trunks snapped in half.

Dead center, where the Heart Stone once shone at the towering tree, a Horde symbol glares at them.

The skiff slows to a stop. Adora stands, knees trembling.

“Fuck,” says Catra.

Adora pivots and slams Catra back against the controls, forearm against her throat. “When did this happen?”

Catra raises her palms. “Whoa! I don’t know either. This must’ve been after I left, okay?”

Adora searches Catra’s face. Her heart beats loud and fast at her ears. “If you’re lying —”

“Why the hell would I go all this way just to bring you to an already abandoned kingdom?” Catra says. “If I were still with Hordak, wouldn’t I have just knocked you out weeks ago and taken you to the Fright Zone?”

A pause. Adora scowls. She steps back, her arm falling to her side.

Catra rubs at her neck. “This had to have been recent. Entrapta would’ve known if it had been a while ago.”

“I guess.” Adora hops off the skiff. The grass beneath her feet crunches brown and dead. She makes her way across to the tree, eyes burning.

“They must’ve taken the Heart Stone,” she says. “If they evacuated, they must’ve taken it.”

“That’s good.” Catra stops beside Adora. She touches Adora’s elbow. “Adora, that’s good. If Hordak had it, everything would’ve gone to shit. Look. Look at the sky.” Endless blue. White fluffy clouds rolling past. A hint of one of the pink moons peeking out. “He doesn’t have it.”

Adora scowls. Her hands tighten into fists at her sides, nails digging into her palms. “How’re we supposed to find the Rebellion now?”

“I think,” Catra says, “we’re going to have to get them to come to us.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i relate to catra bc i too would rather die than apologize 
> 
> i’ll come back to edit this later so uh again sorry about any and all typos! thanks again for all the comments and support, i appreciate it all 💖💖
> 
> feel free to find me on [tumblr](https://pefruma.tumblr.com) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/pefruma)


	4. the nuance is open-ended

_[yes, i have the map of the universe / etched in the palms of my hands / but i got lost somehow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWy2wrtDDU8) _

 

 

 

_“Would Mara have trained me?” Adora asks. She sits on the ledge of a dark mountain. Below her stretches endless destruction: scorching forests, dilapidated villages. The air smells of decay. No matter how often she reminds herself she’s inside her head, she’s in a simulation, her throat still closes. “If she had lived, I mean.”_

_Light Hope stands beside her. “Had she not broken the She-Ra line,” she says, “she would’ve trained the one to follow her. And she would have trained the next. And so on, until it reached you.”_

_The stars above remain hidden by thick sheets of smog. It’s gray and ashen, unlike the chemical oozing green that surrounded the Fright Zone. Adora can only make out pinpricks of light. Eternia still has stars. Eternia is dying faster than Etheria ever will._

_The magic in the air crawls along her skin. It slithers wrong. It’s — different than Shadow Weaver’s in ways Adora can’t pin down._

_“I can’t heal two planets,” she tells Light Hope. A familiar numbness creeps up her arm, her chest. “I can’t even heal one.”_

_Light Hope says, “Eternia is not your responsibility.”_

_The sky above glitches. It reveals overwhelming black nothing and then, stars muffled by smoke._

_“Then why show me this?” Adora says. She rubs the heel of her palm against her chest. “If it’s not my responsibility, why bother?”_

_Light Hope tilts her head. Adora wonders, not for the first time, how sentient she really is. “You must understand the stakes. To understand the importance of your role as She-Ra, you must listen and see.”_

_“Well,” Adora gestures towards the destruction below, “I’m definitely seeing.”  And then, before she loses her nerve: “The sword came from here. Did...Did I —”_

_Light Hope shakes her head. Her eyebrows draw together and she looks, despite herself, remorseful. “I do not know. There are things I was unable to glean throughout the years. Your heritage is one of them.”_

_“Oh.” Adora’s voice is small. It doesn’t matter, anyways. She hasn’t speculated on that since she was a child, huddled close together with Catra under their blankets, trading stories back and forth. It’s just that, maybe — “Can we leave? I think I got enough.”_

_Before Light Hope waves Eternia away, Adora looks up at the stars._

 

_*_

 

“Entrapta didn’t upload Bow’s information,” Catra groans. She throws the communicator onto the grass. It bounces twice and rolls to a stop by a tree stump.

Adora watches. She sits, hugging her knees, and frowns. “Yeah. Why do you think I never called while we were _literally dying_?”

“You’re not the brightest,” Catra offers.

“I was top of our class.”

“At punching things.”

“You’re right.” Adora offers a grin. “Wanna see a demonstration?”

Catra shrugs. “I mean, if that’s the only way you know how to flirt, by all means.”

“I’m not — That’s not —” she sputters. Catra laughs. Adora huffs and hides her face in her hands. “Can we get back to figuring out how to get in contact with the Rebellion?”

“Sure thing, princess.”

As Adora unfolds and spreads the map onto the ground, Catra settles next to her. She’s close enough that Adora catches the faint scent of sweat and campfire smoke that lingers around her. It’s a far cry from the familiar standard soap they used back in the Horde.

Adora clears her throat. She stares down at the map, ignoring the residual warmth on her cheeks. “So. They’re not in Plumeria. They’re not in Bright Moon.” She circles a spot further west than the latter with the tip of a finger. “We could try Mystacor. If anyone knows where Glimmer could be, it’s the sorcerers.”

“So that’s where it is,” says Catra. She has her chin in hand, elbow on her knee. When Adora raises a brow, Catra shrugs a shoulder. “Hordak had me looking for months. Never found it.”

Adora says, “Could’ve gotten Shadow Weaver for that.”

Catra stiffens. Staring pointedly at the map and her voice pointedly blasé, she says, “She was, uh, difficult to work with.”

Adora tilts her head, considering. “Understatement of the year.”

Catra glances at Adora. She taps her fingers against her knee. “We should head out soon.” She pulls herself up and starts towards the skiff. She calls out, over her shoulder, “Never know when they might send a patrol. We gotta get as far as we can.”

And even though Adora knows a distraction when she sees one, she lets it go.

 

*

 

“Really starting to miss my cave,” Catra deadpans. She falls back onto the ground, arms splayed out. She glares up at Adora.

It’s late afternoon and Mystacor blooms just as bright and magical as Adora remembers. Even from the edge of its floating platform, Adora catches the excited chatter of its residents, the faint buzz and pops and hisses of magic. If she listens carefully she can almost hear the gentle splashes of waves from the beach.

It’s nice. Considering the way the fur on Catra’s tail rose when she caught sight of the water, though, Adora figures she disagrees.

“Careful there. Wouldn’t want anyone to think you’re getting sentimental,” Adora says. She offers Catra a hand. “C’mon. You can nap after we get settled in.”

Catra sniffs. She pushes herself up, ignoring Adora’s hand. Adora lets it fall to her side. “You sure they won’t just execute me on the spot?”

“Positive.” Catra raises an eyebrow. Adora puts her hands on her hips and raises her chin. In her best authoritarian voice, she says, “I’m sure we’ll get a warm welcome.”

“Okay.” Catra settles a hand on a hip. She points a claw behind Adora. “Then explain that.”

Adora blinks. She turns. Standing behind her are three guards, weapons drawn. The one in the middle points a spear towards Adora, scowling deeply beneath the shadow of their metal helmet.

“Hands up,” they say.

Adora does just that, the back of her neck sweating. “Okay. Okay, uh, there’s really no need for this. We’re allies.”

The guard narrows their eyes. They nod back at the others and right as the other two surround Adora and Catra, the sound of hurried footsteps breaks through the silence. Castaspella skids into the clearing, sweat collecting at her brow, chest heaving.

“Wait! Stop!” She doubles over, hands on her knees. Wiping at her forehead with the sleeve of her dress, she exhales deeply. “Apologies, I was deep in meditation when I caught wind of your arrival.” And then, turning to the guards: “Lay down your weapons and return to your posts.”

“They never announced their intention to visit prior to arrival,” the same guard says, scowling. “How were we to know —”

“And you’ve done a splendid job. It’s reassuring to know our defenses are so quick to attack unexpected combatants.” Castaspella straightens up and crosses forward to rest a hand on the guard’s shoulder. “They are not enemies, however, so rest easy.”

The guards glance at one another. Slowly, one by one, they lower their weapons and leave. It’s not until they’re walking up the steps to the mainland that Casta turns to them and clasps her hands together, grinning.

“You know, Glimmer always said she believed you were still alive. And here you are!” Casta pulls Adora into a tight hug, chin on her head. Adora sputters and stiffens in the embrace. Her arms hang uselessly at her sides. “Oh, she’ll be ecstatic to know you’re here. You must tell us where you’ve been; what you’ve been up to. And this sweater!” She steps back to take a look at Adora, and Adora flushes beneath her stare. “Lovely. I’ll have to knit you one in a different color. Who’s your friend?”

“Uh, that’s Ca —”

“C’yra,” says Catra, stepping forward with a small bow at the waist. Adora freezes. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Casta smiles. “Likewise," she says. “It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen a magicat.”

Catra shrugs, arms crossed at her back. “We’re a rare species.”

Casta’s brow furrow. She examines Catra, gaze lingering at her eyes, before she turns back to Adora and smooths at the top of Adora’s head. Adora’s entire body goes rigid. “Well, you’re just in time for dinner. We can catch up over a meal or two.”

“Wait. Before...” Adora’s mouth dries. She takes a deep breath; straightens her back. “Are you going to contact Glimmer?”

“Well,” Casta says, “yes? Yes, of course. She should know.”

Adora nods. “If you wouldn’t mind, could you not tell her that I’m here? I...I don’t want her to find out about me secondhand.”

Casta scowls. She brushes a lock of Adora’s hair back.“That’s...understandable, I suppose, but I’m not sure anything else that I might say will convince her to come to Mystacor.”

“Tell her that an ambassador from Halfmoon wants to negotiate a treaty with the Rebellion,” Catra cuts in. “That should bring her running.”

Casta freezes. She finally lets go of Adora. She stares at Catra, wide eyed, and sputters, “But Halfmoon’s gone. Destroyed for decades.”

Catra glances at Adora. It’s nothing more than a quick flicker of the eye. Adora’s brows furrow. “The original settlement was destroyed,” says Catra, slowly, “but we relocated. And we’re willing to meet with the Rebellion again.”

Hand pressed to her chest, Casta exhales shakily. She stares at Catra like...like Perfuma did when She-Ra first stood in Plumeria, holding a cart high above her head.

Catra smiles. “We have a lot to discuss.”  

 

*

 

Instead of leading them towards the dining hall with the rest of the sorcerers, Casta leads them to a private room with a small table already set with placemats, and candles, and cutlery. When Adora shoots her a questioning look, Casta theatrically whispers, “Sometimes the other sorcerers are too much. Even for me!”

And so, still grime with dirt from weeks of travel, Adora and Catra take their seats across from each other. Casta sits at the head, and she launches into a rambling tale of the last time Glimmer and Bow came to visit with a newly single Sea Hawk, and how they tried to cheer him up with the beaches and the springs, but whenever he caught sight of water he burst into tears.

“He wrote quite a few shanties while here,” says Casta right as the kitchen staff enter and begin to set down food. One of them pours wine into Casta’s glass. She nods her thanks and takes a sip. “They’ve gotten fairly popular amongst the younger students here. Heartbreak is a universal language, after all.”

Catra snorts. Through a mouthful of steak she replies, “No need to tell me about it.”

Adora blinks. Catra keeps eating.

It’s not until the third course that Adora pauses mid bite. Cheeks bulging, she turns and meets Casta’s raised brow and smile. She’s leaning forward, chin in both hands. Adora flushes warm beneath the stare.

“You were missing for quite some time,” Casta says, finally, and Adora’s cheeks burn hotter. “Glimmer and Bow never stopped searching.”

Adora’s eyes flit towards Catra, but she’s stuffing food in her mouth like it’s her last meal on Etheria. Throat tight, Adora sits back and tucks her too long hair behind her ears.

“I...I didn’t mean to be gone for so long,” she responds, voice thick. She reaches for her own wine and takes a large swig. It burns. Her eyes water, but she clears her throat and sets the glass down. “It just...sort of happened.”

Casta tilts her head. Her lips purse. “I see.” She pushes her plate away with one hand. She’s only had three, a stark difference to the stacks Adora and Catra have piled up. “And you just happened to stumble onto a kingdom the entire planet believed to be destroyed?”

Adora shifts in her seat. She glances at Catra, who’s eating slower, ears perked up. “Uh...yeah?” She pokes at the meat on her plate with her fork. “Well, not stumble, really. I found a map that led me to the ruins, and then, uh,” she gnaws at the inside of her cheek, “then I stumbled onto Halfmoon.”

“More like we found her snooping around and brought her to us,” Catra says. A drop of gravy stains the corner of her mouth. “Imagine our surprise at finding She-Ra actually alive.” Leaning back in her seat, arms wrapped around her stomach, she sighs. “I know the whole...Halfmoon thing is a lot, and I don’t really wanna repeat it all, so is it alright to save all the questions till after Princess Glimmer arrives?”

For a split second Casta frowns. Her shoulders slump. She’s quick to perk up, though, straightening up in her seat and clasping her hands together. “Of course! It’s of no issue at all. I’ve already sent her notice of your arrival, C’yra, and I’m sure we’ll hear back from her soon. In the meanwhile, the two of you are more than welcome to stay here.” A pause. “Should I have one or two rooms prepared?”

Adora chokes. “Two!” She forces a laugh, the sound high and strained. “Two rooms is fine.”

Casta shrugs. “If you’re sure.”

From across the table, Catra smirks. Adora, in all her magical maturity, sticks her tongue out.

 

*

 

_Training means simulations after simulations. Training means fighting more than just faceless Horde soldiers. The first time Catra materializes before Adora, that signature, raspy, “Hey, Adora,” on her lips, Adora drops her sword._

_She suffers claw marks on her forearm for that slip-up. It smarts just as a real wound would, so she collects herself and throws herself into the fight as much as she can._

_Still, Light Hope scowls. Light Hope berates her._

_“She is your enemy, is she not?”_

_Adora cradles her arm to her chest. The wound, all the way to the bone, rapidly heals itself, muscle and sinew stitching back together. Her stomach lurches. She closes her eyes. “She is.”_

_“You must pull yourself together. Hordak is not your sole threat.”_

_“She’s just.” Adora’s tongue sticks to the roof of her dry mouth. She clenches her eyes shut till she sees white pinpricks of light against the backdrop of her eyelids. “She’s just a Force Captain. She’s not who I should be focusing on.”_

_“Then why is she who you see when you dream?” Adora opens her eyes. Light Hope stares down at her, head tilted. “She is the subject of your nightmares. She is who you most fought against.”_

_“It’s not — It wasn’t like that.”_

_Light Hope stares unblinkingly._

_Adora drags the heels of her palms over her eyes. “Just. Just have me fight against Hordak. Or Shadow Weaver. Fighting Catra is pointless.”_

_“No.”_

_Adora stiffens. She looks back at Light Hope, face red, blood staining the white of her shirt. “What?”_

_“I have been entrusted with your training,” she says, “and so I must do what I deem best. You’ve not let go of your attachments. This will help.”_

_The wound seals up, like it was never there. Adora skims the pads of her finger over the ripped fabric, the smooth skin. The edges of the room gradually form into trees, and bushes, and the familiar creaking noises of the Whispering Woods, until she’s standing in a burning clearing._

_Light Hope says, “Try again.”_

_Adora picks up the sword. She tries again._

 

_*_

 

Adora’s put back in the same room as before. It hasn’t changed from what she can remember, except for the folded clothes on the end of the bed. Sorcerer’s robes, soft to touch, and when she unfolds them, far simpler than the ones Mystacor’s residents wear. The only decorative details lie at the collar: a few white beads and crystals lining the collar till they meet in the middle where they trickle down to the center of the chest.

She showers — a long one, searing hot till every knot in her body loosens _—_ and she changes and she lies down for bed, hair dripping water down her back. She tosses. She turns. She kicks the blankets to the foot of the bed. She pulls the blankets up to her chin. She counts sheep like Bow once told her to. After reaching two hundred, she groans and rolls onto her stomach, burying her face in the pillow. Her hair spreads everywhere: across her back, over the pillow, even dripping onto her shoulder.

After little debate, she leaves her room. She glances to her left, her right, and when no one appears down the halls, she pads over to the door directly across from hers and knocks. She fiddles with the long, burgundy sleeves of the robes, fingers twisting and pulling. No one answers.

“Stupid,” she mutters. She runs a hand through her hair and frowns, pulling the long, wheat strands to her face. Huffing, she lets them fall back down and turns. “Stupid.”

A creak. Adora freezes.

“Couldn’t sleep?” When she turns, she finds Catra leaning forward, the door partly open. Her hair’s a frizzy cloud around her head. Her eyes are heavy lidded and bright against the dark of the hall. Moonlight streams through what Adora assumes is an open window, casting a silver glow around Catra’s head. Adora’s mouth dries. “You do remember that you asked for separate rooms, right?”

She blushes. “I’m not here for that.” When Catra raises an eyebrow, Adora says, “Could you cut my hair?”

A slow blink. Catra opens the door further, leaning her weight against the dark wooden surface. “It’s three in the morning. And you want a haircut.”

Adora nods.

The corner of Catra’s lips quirk into a smile. She steps aside with a gesture of the hand. “Alright, come on in.”

It’s no different than Adora’s room. The blankets are crumpled on the bed, a familiar blue one peeking out from beneath the provided pink ones, and the contents of Catra’s bag are spilled across the room. Papers are strewn all over the floor, and so are the familiar red clothing she wore at Halfmoon. She pauses in the middle of the room and fiddles with the ends of her sleeves.

“Do you have scissors?”

Catra shuts the door behind her. She shrugs. “There’s probably some in the bathroom. If you’re that impatient, I could always use these.” She raises her claws. When Adora crinkles her nose, she laughs. “Hey, you’re the one that woke me up for a _haircut_.”

“I don’t like it this long,” Adora says.

“What about when you’re She-Ra?” Catra leads her to the bathroom. Light floods the room and Catra squats, opening the cabinets. “Your hair’s longer then. And all flowy.”

Adora frowns. She wrings her sleeves. “That’s different. That’s....That’s She-Ra.” She-Ra never scars. She-Ra stands tall, and bright, and just. She’s her. Or she should be. She has been. The distinction blurred throughout the years, but it’s not She-Ra’s strength Adora sees when she looks in the mirror.

“Hm.” Catra raises her hand. A pair of silver scissors glint in the light. “Well, good thing I’m not cutting She-Ra’s hair then.”

“I don’t think you could.”

“Why? Her hair heals too?” Catra stands and gestures for Adora to sit on the close-lidded toilet. Adora plops down onto the seat, back towards Catra, legs on either side. Catra runs her fingers through her hair, claws retracted. “That’d be overkill.”

Adora’s breath catches. She closes her eyes. “I don’t know. It’d ruin my — her image.”

“Right. I forgot she’s supposed to be all glowy and majestic.” Another slow drag of fingers through her hair. Adora leans into the touch. “How much do you want gone?”

She licks at her dry lips. They’re chapped, nearly painful. “A lot. Up to my shoulders, like before.” She wrings at her sleeves again. “Have you ever done this?”

“I cut my own hair. Wasn’t exactly about to let Scorpia or Entrapta try. I get the job done.”

“Okay.” Adora gnaws at the inside of her cheek. “I like it. Your hair, I mean.”

A hand pulls locks of hair over her shoulder, just barely grazing her neck. Catra chuckles. “Didn’t you like it before?”

“Yes. Of course. It’s just.” The first snip cuts through the air. And then another. Adora inhales. “It looks nice now too, is all.”

Catra hums. Hair keeps falling to the ground. They’ll have to sweep it all, after. Catra is gentle and careful as she cuts through Adora’s hair. It’s distinctly different from the efficient and quick trims the Horde caregivers gave back when they were children. Adora could never sit still then, always a great bundle of energy, legs bouncing up and down while they told her to stop moving. Now, though. Now she sits, back ramrod straight, breath caught in her throat. Now she keeps her eyes closed, taking stock of every snip, every brush of Catra’s hand through her hair. She keeps her eyes closed; her hands resting on her thighs. Catra keeps cutting.

Soon enough, a hand brushes the ends of her hair. The tips of Catra’s fingers brush against the line of Adora’s shoulders. She freezes. Catra pulls away. Adora lets out a shaky breath.

“Do you want bangs too?” Adora looks over her shoulder and narrows her eyes at Catra’s grin. “What?”

“Yeah, because that turned out so great last time.”

Catra laughs. She sets down the scissors by the sink. “ _You’re_ the one that chopped off all that hair.”

“You’re the one that egged me on.”

“Can you blame me?”

The corners of Adora’s mouth twitch up. “Just a bit.” She stands and stretches, arms reaching up high, before she makes her way to the mirror. Her hair grazes her shoulders. The reflection before her still looks older, baby fat long gone, but Adora smiles all the same.

“Satisfied customer?” Catra says.

“Not bad,” Adora replies. She steps away from the mirror. On her way out the bathroom, she bumps their shoulders. “Definitely better than what I did.”

Catra snorts. She leans against the bathroom’s doorway, arms crossed. “The only person that could’ve done a worse job than you is Kyle.”

Adora turns, walking backwards towards the door, and presses a hand to her chest. “Still going after the poor man? You haven’t changed.”

“You’re so stupid.” Catra grins. “Where are you going?”

“Just wait a second, okay?”

Adora returns soon enough, the familiar weight of her sword in hand. In the bathroom, Catra sits on the counter, legs crossed, leaning back on her hands. Her eyes flit from Adora’s face to the sword, and then she tilts her head. “I never thought you’d stab me to death in a bathroom.”

Adora snorts. “Shut up.”

It’s quick work to transform the sword to a broom, and only a little slower to sweep every strand of hair into a pile to throw away. By the time she finishes, Catra sits forward, face entirely delighted.

“What?”

“Why the hell,” says Catra, slowly, “is your sword a broom?”

Adora gestures towards the golden broom with a hand. “It can turn into anything.”

Catra raises an eyebrow. “Anything?”

“Yeah.” Adora twirls the broom in hand. After a quick flash of light, it transforms back to its original form. “Pretty cool, huh? It can be any inanimate object I want it to be.”

“That must’ve come in handy. Especially during all those years on your own. All alone.”

Adora pauses. Catra smirks. An embarrassed blush spreads from Adora's neck to her ears. “ _Catra!_ ”

Catra bursts into laughter, clutching at her stomach. “Oh. Oh, man, you should see your face.”

Judging by the burning warmth crawling up her neck, all the way up to her ears, Adora would rather not. With her free hand she swats at Catra’s shaking shoulder.

Catra’s cheeks are pink with laughter, her eyes crinkled at the corners and bright. She’s still grinning, even as her giggles die down. Despite the embarrassed flush of her face, Adora softens, a smile curling at the edges of her lips.

“I missed this,” she says.

A beat of silence passes. Catra shifts closer to the edge of the counter. Her feet swing inches off the floor. The bathroom lights are bright, nearly fluorescent, and cast a harsh yellow over the brown of Catra’s skin, the splattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose. The collar of her robes is loose, revealing a sliver of prominent collarbone. Nothing Adora’s never seen before, and yet —

“Now who’s getting sentimental?” Catra mutters. She scratches at a spot beneath her ear with a single claw.

“Come on. Didn’t you miss this — me too?”

Catra opens her mouth to speak, and then pauses, as if interrupted by an unheard voice. Her brows draw together.

“What?”

“I guess I just…” Catra blows out an exasperated puff of air. She brushes back errant curls from her face. “Yeah. It’s just that…” Since they were younger, smaller, Catra always faltered in speech, just not in the way people recognized. She always took pause, even if only for a split second, as if calculating the weight of her words, the inevitable outcome by Shadow Weaver’s hand. Adora sees the quick drop of Catra’s gaze; the subtle, minute shift in her posture, and almost takes the words back when Catra says, “I guess I didn’t think it was my place to.”

Adora hesitates. She thinks of Light Hope, far away in that castle, the curve of her scowl. She thinks of Shadow Weaver, hands in her hair, beratement and praise all tied together in one breath. She thinks of Catra that final night standing over her, _“I really am going to miss you,”_ so light on her tongue.

“Did you mean it?” Adora says, voice soft. “When you said you didn’t want me dead?”

Catra hesitates. “Yeah. I did.” Her eyes meet Adora’s, gold and blue shining. “I was just angry. You were — It was easier, being mad at you.”

“I still hurt you, though,” Adora says. “You were my best friend and I hurt you.”

“We hurt each other. It’s a war, Adora. We weren’t on the same side.”

Adora shakes her head. “I mean before that.”

Catra sits back, almost like a flinch. “We — Adora, we were _kids_. You can’t just —”

“I still hurt you. I made you feel second best. I didn’t — I didn’t protect you, not really, not like I thought I was —”

“Stop.” Catra hops off the counter. Now they’re too close, nearly pressed together in the small space between counter and wall. “Just stop. That wasn’t you, okay?”

“Wasn’t it?”

“No. That was fucking Shadow Weaver and her mind games. She — She never liked me. She’s the one that pitted us against each other. She’s the one at fault here. We did shit to each other, yeah, but she’s the one that started it all.”

Adora stares down at the ground. She clutches the hilt of the sword with both hands and presses it close to her chest, her entire body thrumming like a heartbeat, loud and heavy. She hears Catra sigh. A hand settles on her wrist.

“Look, it’s all going to be fine now, okay? You’re alive, and Shadow Weaver isn’t, and everything’s going to get better.”

Adora’s head snaps up. “What do you mean Shadow Weaver isn’t alive?”

“Uh,” Catra tilts her head to the side, frowning, “she’s dead. Duh.”

“Since when?”

“Like, three — four years ago? Around there?” Catra shrugs. Her fingers graze the bump of Adora’s wrist. Her voice sounds funny; far away. “Whenever it was I defected.” And then: “Hey, are you okay? Adora?”

Adora flinches back. _“How?”_

“Are you actually upset right now? Shadow Weaver was a bitch. To both of us!” Catra reaches a hand out towards Adora, but she steps back, eyes wide. “Does it seriously matter how she died?”

Adora’s voice fails her. There’s a hitch in her breath, like a hook.

Catra pauses. She sighs. “I killed her.”

“I can’t do this,” says Adora. She stumbles out of the bathroom, towards the door. “I can’t —”

“Seriously? You’re seriously going to get mad?” Catra says, following after her.

Adora pivots around. The sword clatters to the floor as she raises both hands. “You killed her, Catra!”

“Oh, because you’ve never killed anyone before. What do you think happened every time you cut down a Horde soldier, princess? They got some bruises, slapped on some bandages with a kiss from the nurse, and went on their way?”

“That’s not the same and you know it.”

“Were you there, Adora? Because last time I checked, while I was out here fighting a fucking war, dealing with Shadow Weaver’s bullshit, having Hordak breathe down my back, you were taking a nap in a literal castle.”

“Because you left me there!”

“I knew you were still mad.” Catra barks a laugh. She raises the pitch of her voice: “ _Oh, Catra, I’m sorry I yelled at you.”_ Back in her own voice, she spits out, “Bite me.”

“What is your _problem?_ You just told me you killed someone and you’re going to snap at _me?”_

“Because you’re overreacting!”

Adora steps forward, and steps forward, and jabs a finger right at the center of Catra’s chest. “You don’t get to tell me how to grieve.”

Catra slaps Adora’s hand away. “Why the fuck would you grieve her?”

“Didn’t you?”

“The day she died,” Catra says, leaning close, chin defiantly held high, “was the best day of my life.”

With a jerk, Adora steps back. She picks up her sword, shaking her head, eyes burning. “I can’t do this.”

She almost expects Catra to reach for her; to grip her wrist and pull her back, another biting remark at ready. Except when Adora reaches the door, Catra does nothing. Catra says nothing.

  
Adora leaves with a slam of the door. Chest heaving, face surprisingly wet with tears, she leans against the wooden surface. She takes a minute, then two, then three before she crosses the short distance back to her own room, her own bed.

She doesn’t sleep any better.

 

*

 

_The first time she kills Catra, she cries so hard she barely breathes. Light Hope ends the simulation there. She waits, patiently, while Adora struggles on all fours, sobbing pathetically on the floor until she’s covered in snot, and tears, and sweat._

_The thing is: It doesn’t get easier the second, or the third, or the twentieth time. The simulations all stare up at her with wide eyes. Every Catra shudders betrayal with every last breath. Adora loses track of the ways she’s seen the light go out in those eyes._

_The thing is: Adora puts herself together wrong. The simulation — not Catra, not really, not flesh and blood and bone — always tells her, “I wonder what would’ve happened if you stayed,” and Adora learns to respond, “I never would’ve.”_

 

*

 

In the morning, Adora knocks on Catra’s door only to find it empty. Everything’s the way it was hours ago, papers and clothes and blankets strewn throughout the room. Only Catra’s missing. She’s not at the beach, or the springs, or the dining hall. She’s not near the meditation rooms. The classrooms are entirely void of her presence.

Past the hall full of statues, voices echo from a shut door. Adora slows to a stop, ears straining, until eventually she hears a familiar voice shout: “You _really_ expect us to believe you’re suddenly on our side?”

Her heart shudders. She all but rips the doors open.

A large circular table takes up center, a full 3D map of Etheria laid over the surface. The ceiling is pure stained glass, casting the room in shades of violet and pink. At the head of the table, feet propped up, sits Catra, back in her burgundy shalwar kameez. Her gaze slides over towards Adora, and then away with a roll of the eyes.

But across from her —

“Adora?” Glimmer gasps. Her hair’s longer, curling towards her shoulders. The large staff she held drops to the floor with a resounding thud.

Next to her, Bow gapes. His eyes are wide, wet with unshed tears, and he chokes out, “I knew — I knew it.” The three of them dash towards each other, crashing into a mess of limbs and hair, and tears. Bow laughs and tangles his fingers in Adora’s hair, and Glimmer kisses her cheek with a wet smack, and Adora clutches at them so tight her limbs might as well lock that way.

It’s perfect. It’s everything she never allowed herself to imagine.

A groan cuts through it all.

“You guys are so gross. I can’t believe the fate of Etheria is up to you three.”

Glimmer glares at Catra. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t throw you into the dungeons right now.”

“Uh, because you need me.”

“You know what I need?”

“A better vibrator?”

Glimmer growls. She fumbles to stand, face red, but then Bow snaps up and grabs at her shoulders. “Okay, let’s just everybody calm down!”

“I _will not_ calm down! She called us here on false pretenses, breached Mystacor’s defenses, and oh! Let’s not forget she sieged Bright Moon.”

Catra sighs, head lolling to the side. “That was years ago. I’m trying to make amends here. I brought back Adora, didn’t I?”

Glimmer struggles in Bow’s grip. “I’m going to _end_ you.”

“I’d like to see you try, Sparkles.”

“Stop!” Adora yells. She gets to her feet, hands on her hips, and forces her shoulders back. “The two of you need to stop and actually listen to each other.”

“Why should I ever listen to her?” Glimmer says.

Adora offers Catra one last apologetic look, met by a confused raised brow. She takes a deep breath and turns back to Glimmer.

“We need her for the alliance,” she says. "Catra’s the princess of Halfmoon." 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi i'm not dead and neither is this fic
> 
> i rewrote this chapter like, 7 times in the past two months and this is the only version i've liked lol. anyways! the first quarter of this fic is finally done and now we’re gonna get to the juicy stuff 😤😤 see y’all on the other side of s2! as always, i'm @pefruma on both tumblr and twitter


	5. you think i mean to lose, i mean to choose

_[who am i now? i wouldn't say it's easy to change my mind / you're saying try, love, it's harder to let it go](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYqa3w2NlzY) _

 

 

**PART TWO:**

 

 

_Catra wakes in cold sweat. At some point in the night she kicked the blankets to the foot of the bed. They tangle around her ankles, now. It takes her one, two seconds to force a shaky breathe out. Another few until she relaxes the tense line of her spine._

_Her surroundings come to in pieces: Hazy, amber-hued light streams through the open windows, filtered only by the gauzy white curtains fluttering in the soft breeze. A faint, almost inaudible buzz from the crystals embedded all over the walls of the room, even the surface outside the house breaks the silence. A soft snore tickles at her right._

_Another trembling sigh leaves Catra’s lips. She turns. Parisa, curled asleep on her side, dark eyelashes casting shadows over the faint flush of her cheeks. A curling tendril of red escapes her braid and caresses the elegant line of her neck, the end like a hook, a beckoning finger. Catra tugs at it, and then lets go, watching its soft bounce. She brushes it behind Parisa’s ear, tips of her fingers lingering at her cheek._

_Parisa groans and burrows further into her blankets. She blinks awake, two luminescent green eyes glowing in the dark. She looks back at Catra, gaze heavy-lidded and drowsy, until the corner of her mouth tugs into a frown. A sigh, “Another nightmare?”_

_Catra hesitates. She curls her hand at the nape of Parisa’s neck. She scoots and draws Parisa close till their foreheads touch. “It doesn’t matter.”_

_A hum. “Third night in a row.” She nudges the tip of Catra’s nose with her own. “Tell me about it. You said Behnam told you to,” and here she dramatically lowers her voice, “_ explore your feelings.”

_Catra lets go of her and flops onto her back. “Bad time to bring up the old man.” She scowls. Parisa props herself up on an elbow and smiles down at her until that familiar guilt coils in Catra’s chest. Be better, she reminds herself. You’re better, now. “It was just — a friend.”_

_“Adora?” Catra tenses, stomach swooping. Shrugging a shoulder, Parisa says, “You say her name in your sleep, sometimes.”_

_Catra shuts her eyes. She remembers the break in Adora’s voice as she pleaded up at her; the white knuckled grip of her hand on that small, jutting ledge. “Yeah. Adora.”_

 

_*_

 

_Here’s the thing: According to her therapist, because she has one now, she has something called complex post-traumatic stress disorder, which just sounds like a convoluted way of saying she’s fucked up, which she already knew. Behnam told her in that irritatingly calm, soothing voice of his. He explained that sometimes — usually, actually, it relieves people to put a name to what’s happening to them._

_Catra wanted to say bullshit, or whatever, or scoff and walk out the room, like she’d done countless times in the past, but she thought of Scorpia’s encouraging smile, and Entrapta’s careful, calculating eyes before she so much as sits near Catra, and Parisa’s lingering stares when she thinks Catra isn’t looking, so she stayed put. She listened to him rattle on about treatment, about different coping mechanisms, and she stayed. It’s all very frustrating, but she’s trying to be better now._

_Here’s the thing: Behnam tells her it’s okay to feel relieved when she remembers Shadow Weaver’s shuddering breath before the stone cold stillness locked her limbs, before the scent of fresh piss started wafting in the air. He tells her it’s okay, too, that she shakes and shakes and can’t stop shaking when she remembers._

_“It’s never as simple as black and white,” he says, hands folded on his blanket covered lap. His home office has a lot of fuzzy blankets, and soft pillows, and little trinkets here and there. He never minds when Catra tinkers with the tiny bells or the random crystals. “She was practically your mother.”_

_Catra snorts. “She was never a mother figure. More like a handler.”_

_Behnam raises a gray brow. He’s old. Like, really old. Catra’s not sure how he hasn’t keeled over yet. “A handler?”_

_“She raised Adora,” she says, slowly, drawing out the words. “I was just — there. She was in charge of a bunch of us, y’know. Literally every orphan the Horde had.” She pops her jaw, once, twice. It still clicks from that time Adora hit her too hard during a combat simulation. “I was more like a pet, or something. I was only around because Adora liked me.”_

_Behnam leans forward just a bit. “You know, you mention Adora a lot, but you don’t talk about her.”_

_“Huh.” Catra glances at the clock. “Never noticed.”_

_“Deflecting again.”_

_She presses a hand to her chest. “I’ve never deflected in my life.”_

_He chuckles. “It’s fine. We don’t have to go over that now.” He nods towards the mug sitting untouched on the table beside her. “You didn’t like the tea?”_

_“I never like the tea.” She grabs the mug regardless and takes a sip. It’s gone cold, and there’s not enough sugar. She downs it anyways. She says, “I killed Adora too,” and waits for Behnam’s reaction, clutching tight at the mug with both hands. He simply cocks his head. “I told you. I’m a bad person.”_

_“Remember what I said about good or bad.”_

_Catra groans and slides down in her seat. “Try not to judge my past self. Blah, blah, blah.” She scowls and sets the mug back down on its coaster. “But this is me. Present tense. I’m bad.” Behnam stares at her, big brown eyes unblinking. She groans again. “Okay, whatever! Not bad. It makes me_ feel _bad.”_

_He grins. “There you go.”_

_“You’re not going to say anything about the whole ‘I killed Adora’ thing?”_

_“Do you want me to?”_

_“I dunno.”_

_“Like I said, this is at your own pace, Catra.” He shrugs. With a frown, he glances at the ticking clock. He sighs. “You have a meeting with your aunt soon, right?”_

_“Ugh. Don’t call Mahsati that.”_

_“I apologize.” He smooths at his blanket. “Before we end the session, is there anything else?”_

_Catra clenches her jaw. The clock ticks, and ticks, loud in the quiet of the room. “I guess I just — wish I could do it over with her. Adora, I mean.” She bites at the end of her thumb. “I don’t regret killing Shadow Weaver. But Adora…” She swallows whatever words she might’ve said next. She wrings her hands together on her lap. The pause stretches on, and on, until: “Whatever. I’m done for today.”_

 

*

 

The room halts into stunned silence. Glimmer and Bow stare back at Adora with twin expressions of horror, eyes wide and jaws dropped. She sucks in a deep breath. She squares her shoulders. She turns.

Catra scowls back at her. She’s no longer sitting laidback and easy in her seat. She’s standing, a palm flat on the surface of the table. She says, “You knew,” so simply that Adora has no other choice but to nod.

“It’s _true?”_ screeches Glimmer. “She — She can’t be a princess!”

“It’s not like you get along with every princess, Glimmer,” Adora responds, still looking at Catra. Something like guilt coils tight in Adora’s chest; something like a childhood standing helpless while Shadow Weaver gripped Catra’s thin arm and dragged her away, or watching Catra’s wide eyes narrow and glisten as she turned away in a cloud of smoke.

She averts her gaze.

Bow’s wringing at his hands, a familiar gesture. His eyes flit between her, and Glimmer, and Catra and back to her. “I think we have a lot to talk about.”

“Not much, really,” says Catra. She crosses her arms and shifts her weight to one leg. She won’t meet Adora’s eye. “Halfmoon dissolved its monarchy. So I can’t really help with the _Princess_ Alliance.”

“Dissolving the actual monarchy doesn’t matter,” says Adora. “What matters is your connection to your runestone.”

Catra raises an eyebrow. “I don’t have a runestone.”

“Every princess has a runestone.”

“Entrapta doesn’t,” Bow says. He sets his weapons on the table and settles into a seat, back a straight line, posture textbook perfect. His hair is cropped short and close to his scalp. “At least, she’s never mentioned it.”

“She doesn’t,” Catra agrees. Bow offers a wavering smile in her direction. She wrinkles her nose. “So, point made. I don’t have a runestone. Entrapta doesn’t. Scorpia hasn’t been connected to the Black Garnet, like, ever. So she basically doesn’t either.”

“I haven’t been able to connect to the Moon Stone in years,” whispers Glimmer. She crosses her arms. She glances at Adora, and then Catra, and then at the ground, as if ashamed. The knot in Adora’s chest tightens. “Guess I’m another to add to the list.”

“I can —” Adora’s mouth dries. She licks at the corner of her lips. “I can fix that, actually. I can fix all your connections to your runestones. It’s actually why I’m here.” A pause. She smooths at her robes. “Not _here_ , here. I mean, it’s why She-Ra is here. As a protector.” The three of them stare unblinkingly at Adora. She sighs. “My runestone can help all the princesses. And we need all the princesses in order to heal the planet.” She pauses, waiting for it to sink in. “Etheria’s dying.”

“Look, I’m here to negotiate asylum for Horde defectors,” Catra says. “That’s my job. That’s what I came here for. I don’t want to be mixed up in all your princess magic bullshit.”

“You really think I’d ever negotiate with you?” Glimmer glares at Catra. She slams her hands flat on the table, leaning forward with a scowl. _“You took my mother prisoner.”_

Adora blanches. Catra’s jaw clenches. Her gaze flickers for just a moment towards Adora, so quick that Adora thinks she’s imagined it, but then she’s scowling at Glimmer like Adora’s not in the room at all. “We were on opposite sides of a war, Sparkles. We’re not anymore.” She shrugs. “You’d think a war commander would be better at putting strategy over her own feelings, but I guess not.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? _You’re_ lecturing _me_ about personal feelings?” Glimmer starts to climb onto the table, except Bow jumps to his feet, his chair toppling back, and grabs onto her shoulders. Bow’s saying, “Okay, let’s not get into this now,” while Glimmer yells, “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about your fucking breakdown, you piece of shit,” and Catra’s grinning like she’s won one of those silly cadet racing competitions from when they were kids. It’s infuriating.

“Shut up!” Adora stabs her sword through the floor. The marble tiles crack and fissure. Everyone pauses: Glimmer, still held back by a sweating Bow, and Catra, arms crossed and with a raised brow. “Everyone is going to sit down. And we’re going to talk like adults. No more yelling.” She glares at Glimmer. “No more antagonizing,” she snipes at Catra. “Is that clear?”

Bow nods. Muttering underneath her breath, Glimmer clammers down from the table. It’s not until she takes a seat that Bow sighs and uprights his chair before plopping down into it, practically melting into the seat.

On the other end of the table, Catra remains immobile. Adora scowls back at her. Catra scoffs and inspects her nails. Her claws are out, Adora notices. “We should wait for Castaspella.”

“Why? Want to throw my aunt in prison too?” says Glimmer. Bow elbows her side.

Catra rolls her eyes. “She wants to be included in any negotiations with Halfmoon.”

“One of you two should go get her.” Adora pulls the sword out from the ground, sheathing it back into its scabbard. The fissures in the marble stretch further across the floor. “Catra and I will stay here.” Of course no one moves. Rubbing at her forehead with her free hand, she manages to get out, “Glimmer, could you _please_ get Castaspella?” through gritted teeth.

“Why should I leave?” she grumbles, only to scowl when she meets Adora’s narrowed eyes. She pushes the chair back, muttering underneath her breath the entire time, and stomps towards the door, only pausing to pick up her staff on the way there. She slams the door shut.

It’s not until the sound of Glimmer’s stomping steps fade away that Adora falls into her own seat and slumps so far down she might as well slide right off. A blooming headache pounds at the base of her temples. She rubs at them, and then looks back at a scowling Catra. “Did you really imprison Queen Angella?”

Catra stares back at her. She opens her mouth; closes it. She sighs. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

“Couldn’t have released her when you defected?”

“She’s in Beast Island, so no.” Catra props her feet back onto the table, leaning back in her seat once more. She folds her arms behind her head. “Wasn’t exactly about to go on a rescue mission when I was more worried about Hordak, y’know, _killing_ me.”

“Entrapta did tell us,” offers Bow. “We just haven’t been able to locate the island. It’s not on any map, and none of our scouts have found anything.”

“They aren’t going to find it. It’s undetectable. But _I_ know where it is,” says Catra. “Not that Princess Sparkles is going to ever stop and listen to me.”

Bow narrows his eyes. “Is...Is that what you wanted to negotiate?”

“You sound like you doubt it.”

“Can you blame him?” adds Adora. She sits up, and leans forward, elbows on the table, to rest her head in her hands. “You haven’t exactly been the most honest person in the room.”

Catra flutters her eyelashes, the expression too mischievous to bear any innocence, just like when they were kids. She says, “That hurts, princess,” and Adora’s headache only pounds harder.

 

*

 

_“You’re a really good artist,” Scorpia tells her one day. She’s flipping through pages of a leather notebook Catra’s kept hidden underneath her mattress. With an indignant, “Hey!” Catra snatches it out of her pincers and cradles it close to her chest, but Scorpia just smiles innocently and says, “If you wanna borrow my pencils, you can.”_

_“I don’t want to borrow shit,” says Catra. Before Scorpia’s face has the chance to fall in that heartbreaking way it does, Catra mumbles, “At least ask before you go through my stuff.”_

_Scorpia blinks. “It was just laying out here.”_

_Catra’s tail bristles. And then she remembers falling asleep in the living room a few nights before, right after another fight with Mahsati, that notebook still in hand._

_“That was an accident.”_

_“Okay.” Scorpia raises her pincers, the picture of innocence. “Won’t happen again, wildcat.” Except, because Scorpia never lets anything go, “You got Adora just right, you know. I almost forgot what she looked like until I saw your drawings.”_

_Cheeks burning, Catra says, “Shut up.”_

_“It’s okay to miss her.”_

_“Scorpia,” says Catra, still clutching at the book, “just stop, okay?”_

_A pause. Scorpia fiddles with a loose end at the hem of her shirt. “Your other drawings were good too. Of everyone else, I mean. Me, and Entrapta, and even the Chancellor. And the Fright Zone, too.” She shrugs. “We could draw together, sometime. It’s been a while since we’ve hung out.”_

_The thing is Scorpia’s right. Between Parisa, and Entrapta, and both their jobs, Catra’s let Scorpia fall through the cracks. She can’t really blame her for clinging to this. They’re best friends, whether Catra says it outloud or not.  So she sighs and loosens her posture, shoulders relaxing. “I’d like that, actually.”_

 

_*_

 

The politics of it all bore Adora. She’s never been a diplomat, nor has she ever wanted to be despite the princess titled handed to her on a shiny sword. Being a soldier is easier: Take orders, carry through missions. Do the right thing should be tacked on there too, except that’s never been easy.

So she tries to listen, really, as Glimmer and Bow and Catra and Castaspella work out treaties, and trade routes, and even students, since Casta rambles on and on about magicats’ natural magical affinities, which seems to work out in the end. Catra’s smiling at Casta, so, that’s a win, Adora guesses.

It’s not until Catra says, “I can take you to Beast Island,” that Adora’s head snaps up from where she’d been nodding off.

Glimmer glares at Catra, her mouth twisted into a deep scowl. A part of Adora wants to say she’ll get her face stuck like that, but she holds her tongue. “Why would you want to?”

“Like I said, I’m making amends,” says Catra. “It works in both our favors anyways. We both want the Horde gone, right?”

Bow touches Glimmer’s wrist, smiling carefully. “Right. And this is definitely a start. Don’t you agree, Glimmer?”

A pause. Glimmer stares at Catra, expression dark. “Can I think about it?” When Bow opens his mouth to protest, she settles her hand over his. “It’s been a long morning. We should take a break anyways.” She turns to Catra. “I’m not saying no. Just — Just let me think on it, okay?”

Catra shrugs. “Whatever. Fine by me. I’m hungry anyways.”

“We need to talk more about the Princess Alliance,” says Adora, standing up. Around the table, everyone pauses. Bow’s hand lingers at Glimmer’s elbow, the two of them already out of their seats. Half out of her seat, Catra scowls directly at Adora.

The silence stretches. Casta pushes out of her seat, the wood screeching against the marble. “I think that’s my cue to leave you kids.” She gestures towards the floor with a half-hearted flutter of the hands. “Do take care not to destroy more property.” She all but runs towards the door. It clicks shut behind her.

“I don’t want her here for this,” says Glimmer.

“Glimmer, c’mon, you know this isn’t — ” Bow starts, only to taper off when she glares up at him. He drops his hand and rubs at his forehead. “She’s a princess.  She should be here.”

“No,” Catra says. “For once Sparkles is right. I don’t wanna be here for this either. So you three can talk about your feelings and figure out how to turn the world all glitter and flowers or whatever it is you do.” She pushes away from the table and head towards the door. “I’m out.”

Except Adora grabs at her wrist.

Catra glares up at her. Beneath the tips of her fingers, Adora can feel Catra’s heartbeat pick up. “Look, we need to talk about this — ”

“You really don’t change, do you?” Catra rips her wrist out of Adora’s grip. “I don’t want to talk about it. What part of that don’t you get?”

“What part of _Etheria is dying_ do you not get?”

“You’re the one with a shining tiara and magic sword! You go fix it.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do!” Adora drags her hands over her face. “Etheria’s dying, and we need the combined power of all the princesses to heal it, and I can’t do _anything_ if you’re running away from this.”

Catra tilts her head. “You’re the one always running.”  

Adora flinches back as if hit. She reaches out and says, voice cracking, “Catra,” but she steps back with a crinkle of her nose.

“I told you what I’m here for.” She nods towards Glimmer. “I’ll meet up with you here in three hours to pick up negotiations.” Before Glimmer can so much as nod, Catra heads towards the door. It slams shut behind her. Adora flinches.

A pair of arms wrap around her, pinning her own in place. Adora stiffens. She looks down at the top of Glimmer’s head.

“Ignore her. We can figure things out.”

Bow joins in, wrapping them both up in his arms. “Yeah, exactly. We’re back together. That’s what matters.”

Adora relaxes into their embrace, pressing her forehead against Bow’s neck and wiggling one arm out to wrap around Glimmer’s shoulders, and it’s warm, and safe, and everything she’s wanted for years and years without knowing how to string the words together. Still, she finds herself looking towards the twin doors.

 

*

 

“Oh! Perfuma and Mermista dated for a while,” says Bow, gesticulating enthusiastically, “except that was even messier than all the times Mermista and Sea Hawk were together. The alliance nearly broke up then.”

“Nearly? Salineas and Plumeria stopped trade with each other for months after they broke up.” Glimmer rolls her eyes, leaning back on her hands. The lavender towel crinkles beneath her. “We had to stage an intervention.”

“I can’t see them dating,” Adora says. She’s lying supine on a matching towel, a hand resting on the warm, soft sand by the edges, the other on her bare stomach. This early in the day, the third moon’s yet to reach its peak, casting a comfortable warmth throughout the beach. She’s still had to shrug off the sorcerer’s robes and trade them for the cottony swimwear she wore last time.

“Trust me, you’re lucky you didn’t.” Bow pauses, seeming to realize what he’s just said. Adora keeps her face blank. “I mean. It was just — It was a lot of unnecessary stress.”

Glimmer shoves at his shoulder. “It was basically a soap opera. Mermista and Sea Hawk are back together, though.”

“Casta said that last time you were here Sea Hawk was writing break up shanties.”

“Yeah...They got back together like two days after that,” says Bow.

Adora snorts. She sits up on her elbows. “Any more gossip?”

At that, Glimmer gets a twinkle in her eye. Bow instantly blanches and says, “Glimmer, wait, _Glimmer_ —”

“Did you know,” she says, slowly, leaning close to Adora, “that Bow and Perfuma almost eloped once?”

It takes Adora a second. She tilts her head, considering. “Elope?”

“Do you not know what —” Glimmer starts.

Bow shushes her, pressing a single finger to her lips. She looks down at the appendage, going cross-eyed. “Adora, please tell me you’re just joking.”

She scoffs. Her cheeks are warm. “Pfft. Duh. Obviously. I’m clearly — _Obviously_ I’m joking. Why wouldn’t I be?” Bow stares at her. She hangs her head. “What’s elope?”

“You run away and get married,” says Glimmer. “We were in Plumeria for Perfuma’s birthday, and let’s just say she and Bow aren’t the best with champagne.”

“We weren’t going to actually —”

“You were trying to get Sea Hawk to lend you his boat!”

“It was in the moment, okay!” Bow plops onto his back. “It didn’t happen, clearly!”

“Did everyone date each other while I was gone?” Adora says.

Bow and Glimmer glance at each other. Then Glimmer shrugs. “Not everyone.” She gives Bow another look before she sits back on her haunches, hands settled on her lap. “So...How about you?”

Adora’s face burns. “I don’t — I.” She snorts, laughs, the sound somewhat manic. “Pfft. I’m not dating. Why would I even? I don’t have the time, and I don’t —”

“Not that,” says Bow. He props himself up with a single elbow and raises an eyebrow. “But interesting.” Adora pouts, but he ignores it. “Look. You were gone for years. What were you doing?”

“Yeah. You said you were just going to go looking for that ruin you found once,” Glimmer adds. “Then you just...never came back.”

Adora can’t quite meet either of their eyes, now. The familiar knot tightens, and tightens, threatening to choke her out. “I didn’t know I was gone that long.” She gnaws at her lip. “I thought — A year, or two, at most. But time worked differently in that castle.”

Bow tilts his head. “Castle?”

“The Crystal Castle,” she supplies. “It’s in the Whispering Woods. It was made for me — for She-Ra. That’s where I was. I was training my powers.” She thinks of Light Hope waiting, the static-y buzz of her form, the way she seemed...less by the time Adora left. Frowning, Adora reaches for the sword on the other side of her towel, fingers curling around the familiar hilt. She breathes out. “There was a lot I didn’t know. A lot that everyone doesn’t know. But I can fix things now.” She looks at Glimmer and offers a smile. “Your powers. I can bring them back.”

“Adora,” Glimmer says, voice soft. She touches Adora’s shoulder, hand warm and small, with callouses she never had before. “I’m just glad you’re back.”

 

*

 

 _The kitchen is small, quaint, blooming with the smell of spices and cooking meat. It’s a different picture than the Fright Zone kitchens with its bubbling, tasteless foods and dull ration bars. The first week after she arrived in Halfmoon, Catra tasted Mahsati’s fesenj_ _ā_ _n and refused to eat anything else for days. She’s branched out since then; has tried almost everything from the marketplace, especially in those early months with Scorpia and Entrapta to shop alongside her and then hurry back to their home to try to replicate what they’ve seen._

 _Catra still can’t quite get fesenj_ _ān_ _right, but her recipe is almost good enough to keep her away from Mahsati’s dining table for more than a few weeks._

 _She couldn’t avoid today, though. After another meeting regarding the war and the influx of Horde refugees, Mahsati kept Catra behind and invited her to dinner_ — _something about not seeing her outside of politics for far too long, and Catra spending all her time with either Parisa or Scorpia and Entrapta._

_“My assistant and niece stole each other away from me,” she teased, and well, that was that._

_Catra sits on the kitchen counter, watching Mahsati cook. She’s going for all of Catra’s favorites tonight: fesenj_ _ān, and taftan, and shashlik, and kofta, and borani. It’s way too much to eat in one sitting, and way too much for a simple dinner, meaning she wants something, meaning the evening will end with more yelling and Catra storming out, meaning Mahsati will just pack up all the leftovers and give them to Parisa the next morning to give to her, again._

_Still, Catra stays put._

_“Are you getting along with Behnam?”_

_“Yeah. He’s nice,” says Catra._

_Mahsati hums. She slaps at Catra’s hand with her tail when Catra reaches for one of the dishes. “Good. He’s supposed to be one of the best in all the kingdom.” Then, while prepping one of the plates: “You should reconsider applying to the university.”_

_“There we go,” Catra scoffs. “I knew you wanted something.”_

_“I want the best for you.”_

_“Uh huh. Because school is totally what’s best for me.”_

_Mahsati finally looks back at Catra with a glare. “You’re smart. You’re driven. You clearly care about your people.” She sets down a wooden spoon and steps towards Catra. She caresses the tuft beneath Catra’s ear, her touch careful, claws detracted. Catra’s stomach lurches. “You’re not at war here, child.”_

_“Stop.” Catra slaps Mahsati’s hand away. Her heart beats rabbit fast, entire body throbbing along with it, her limbs tense. She breathes in, out. “Just stop.” She clenches her eyes shut; forces herself to remember Behnam’s bullshit exercises, focusing on the granite countertop beneath her, the scent of warm food filling the small space. After a moment, she exhales shakily and meets Mahsati’s concerned stare with a frown. “I don’t want to go to school. I don’t want — I don’t want to do your job. Not now, not in the future. Wasn’t the whole point of a fucking council to get rid of one ruling family?”_

_“C’yra, you’re misunderstanding —”_

_“Am I?”_

_A pause. Mahsati sighs. Her eyes, twin mirrors of Catra’s own, wrinkle at the corners. “I see your potential. Is that such a bad thing?”_

_A room choked of air. Red eyes glaring down at her, and she can’t breathe, can’t speak, can barely keep her eyes open without the room spinning and pitching black. Catra’s head lolls, gaze falling, and she says, “Isn’t it always?”_

 

*

 

It’s later, after the three of them split up so they can get dressed in their respective rooms, that Adora catches sight of Catra slinking through the halls. It’s enough to give Adora pause, still half turned towards the direction of her room. Catra doesn’t notice her, or doesn’t care enough to acknowledge her, and that’s all Adora needs to follow after her.

By the time Adora catches up to Catra, Catra’s rounding a corner towards the springs. She walks at a leisurely pace, tail slowly wagging back and forth, for all the world unaware of Adora trailing her. Right as she’s about to pass by a small alcove, the clear glass window half covered by a violet curtain, Adora grips Catra’s elbow and drags her in, slamming her against the wall and holding her up with a hand gripping the collar of her shirt.  

Scowling, Catra says, “What the _hell_ , Adora?” except Adora leans in close and says, “What are you _doing?”_

A dead break. Catra’s eyebrows practically rise all the way to her hairline. “What am I doing? What the hell are _you_ doing?”

“Why,” says Adora, “are you negotiating on Halfmoon’s behalf when the Chancellor said the council wanted nothing to do with the Rebellion?”

“Because suddenly you know all about Halfmoon’s government,” Catra scoffs. “Look, I know what I’m doing. Don’t worry about it.”

“If you’re lying to Glimmer and Bow, I’ll —”

“What, Adora? You’ll what?”

Adora hesitates. Before the Crystal Castle, before the years and years spent training in a haze, Adora and Catra stood at equal height. Now, though, Adora towers an inch or two higher, enough that when she leans over her, Catra has to raise her chin to meet her eyes. Adora releases her and instead presses a hand against the wall by Catra’s head. “You swear you aren’t up to anything?”

Catra rolls her eyes. She pushes at Adora’s shoulders with both hands, with enough force that an unsuspecting Adora stumbles back against the opposite wall. She steps forward, rising on the balls of her feet, close enough that Adora can count the individual freckles splattered across the bridge of Catra’s nose, and says, “Oh, Adora.” Her hand rests flat on the center of Adora’s chest, right on her pounding heart. “When are you going to trust that I’m on your side?”

“I don’t know,” she breathes. “Maybe when you start being honest.”

“I’m hurt. I’m always honest.” Catra grins. Her cheeks dimple. She falls back on her heels with a spring, hand falling away. “You still mad at me, princess?”

“Let’s see.” Adora starts to tick off from her fingers, “You dropped a the life changing bomb that you murdered Shadow Weaver on me last night. You told me I shouldn’t be upset. You antagonized my friends. I find out you _kidnapped Glimmer’s mom and left her in Beast Island_.” She crosses her arms. “Am I forgetting anything else?”

“I did let you fall into an unknown abyss while we were both lost in a horrifying murderous castle.”

“You’re so helpful.”

“What can I say? I’ve always been a model citizen.”

Adora bites the inside of her cheeks. Silence curls around them. The window resides only a foot or two away from them, the empty lavender beach in clear view. Bright, radiant moonlight casts a yellow glow over Catra, illuminating the small breadth of space between them. The curtain casts a small shadow over Adora.

“Why didn’t you tell me yourself you’re a princess?” Adora says.

“Because I’m not.” Catra scowls. “It’s an antiquated system. Just because I was born as one doesn’t mean I stay one.”

“You know that it’s more than just ruling a kingdom. Not every princess has one.” Adora stops, embarrassed, and continues, “I don’t.”

“But you do have a castle,” Catra points out. “Besides, it’s all magic, and sparkles, and _power of friendship_.” She snorts. She brushes stray locks of hair away from her face. “You don’t need me.”

Adora smiles with effort, the twist of her mouth biting. “I wish I didn’t.”

 

*

 

“I’ve thought about your terms,” starts Glimmer, standing at full height with her staff at hand. “But I can’t agree to grant pardon to any Horde defectors that wish to join the rebellion.”

The skin between Catra’s eyebrows pinches tight. “They’ve left the Horde. Just like Adora.” She raises her chin. “What makes them any different?”

“Look, I’m barely keeping myself back from imprisoning you. Should I just grant a pardon to any Horde defector, regardless of what they’ve done?” She shakes her head. “They’ll stand trial.”

“So that they can be declared guilty after ten minutes? How is that fair?”

“The Horde is taking over the planet. They sieged Bright Moon. They’re holding my mother prisoner.” Glimmer slams a hand on the table. “How is _that_ fair?”

“Some of them are kids! Don’t you get that? Orphan kids, taken from their homes, their parents. They never knew anything else, but they’re willing to lay down their lives to fight against the place they grew up,” says Catra. “Why does one princess get special privilege over the rest?”

Glimmer’s mouth twists in a frown. She glances at Bow. “A trial, judged by former Bright Moon citizens.” Catra opens her mouth, but Glimmer raises a hand. “As well as Adora.”

“What?” Adora asks. “Wait —”

“As a former Horde soldier, she’ll know both sides,” continues Glimmer. “It’ll be a fair, unbiased trial. Is that better?” Catra scowls; nods. With a smile, Glimmer sits, all grace and sparkles. “And you’ll help us rescue my mother before anything else.”

“I said I would.” Catra crosses her arms and leans back in her seat. “The queen for the safety of my people.”

“Great.” Glimmer grins, all teeth. “Then we’ll leave for Beast Island tomorrow.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're finally getting into catra's head, which is super exciting! just like with adora's, none of the flashbacks are going to be in actual chronological order lol. anyways! as always i'm @pefruma on both tumblr and twitter.


	6. fear of the water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi so this is when that “graphic depictions of violence” tag starts to kick in. it’s nothing Too bad, mostly just descriptions of blood, but stay safe!! also there’s an in depth description of a panic attack near the end of the chapter.
> 
> it’s been a month but this chapter is double the length of regular ones to make up for it! enjoy x

_[some ancient call / that i've answered before / it lives in my walls / and it's under the floor / if this was meant for me, why does it hurt so much? / and if you're not made for me, why did we fall in love?](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-T4THwne8IE) _

 

 

_The door slides open with a hiss. Scorpia, sitting close to a busy Entrapta tinkering with Emily, doesn’t even look up, too busy staring at Entrapta with hearts in her eyes and her chin resting on her claw the way she has been the past couple of months._

_“Hey, wildcat,” she says absentmindedly._

_Catra hisses. “Get up. Both of you.”_

_Neither of them do. Emily twitches in place, like a dance. Catra slinks right in front of them, waits silent, waits patient, and only then does she push Entrapta’s tool kit off the table._

_“Hey!” Entrapta pushes up her welding visor, hair frizzing around her. “That was rude — ” The pout falls off her face, eyes widening, expression for once horrified instead of the typical fascination she holds. “Is that blood?”_

_Scorpia scrambles up. She’s reaching for Catra, rambling, “Are you hurt? Who hurt you? I’ll tear them apart,” but Catra jumps onto a table, then onto the steel pipes hanging above them._

_“We need to go,” she says. She flexes her hands against the steel; watches as drying blood —_ fingers twitching against cold asphalt; struggling, wheezing breaths deafening against the silence; the roaring of her heartbeat, too loud, too loud, but not enough to drown out that last, “Catra,” croaked out into the air _— drips down her wrist, her hands, her claws, staining the metal below her. Her stomach turns, empty, yawning. Every part of her shakes. “They’ll be coming for us soon.”_

 

_*_

 

Even in the early moonrise, Sea Hawk brims with energy. He tears up at the sight of Adora; hugs her so tight she thinks her eyeballs might pop out of their sockets, and rambles on and on about how pleased Mermista will be to learn of her return. He doesn’t look that different, except for the new set of clothes and the beard adorning his jaw. It scratches her face when they hug.

“Beast Island,” he says, after, posing heroically at the helm of a new ship. The Dragon’s Daughter Eighteen, he called it. “What a daring adventure. One for the storybooks! One for the songs!”

“If you sing,” groans Catra from where she sits center deck, face curiously green, “I’m throwing you overboard.”

Sea Hawk chuckles, though his face turns deathly pale. Bow wraps an arm around his shoulders and points out at the sea. “Ignore her. Today we set sail for adventure!”

“Or death,” supplies Glimmer. She sets down a chest by the rest of their belongings. The violet staff rests strapped to her back and her hair’s pulled back into two twin braids. She wipes at beads of sweat at her brow. “Are any of you going to help at all?”

“Adora’s got it,” says Catra. The boat rocks and she hides her face in her knees. Glimmer smirks.

Walking past with four bulging bags in her arms, Adora pushes at Glimmer’s shoulder. The smirk slides right off, replaced by a pout. She sticks her tongue out at Adora, who volleys the gesture back as she sets down the last of their stuff. She wipes her hands on the dark pants Castaspella gifted her before they left. “That’s the last of it, anyways.”

“Excellent!” Sea Hawk hops off the helm. “Who shall be my navigator?”

A pause. Glimmer crosses her arms. Bow whistles and starts to rifle through one of their bags.

With a groan, Catra looks up from her legs. “Me. That’d be me.”

Sea Hawk visibly gulps. He tugs at the neck of his shirt. “I see. Well, we shall be working together closely, then!” He leans towards Bow, a hand cupped at the side of his mouth, and whispers, “She’s not still evil, is she?”

“Come a little closer and find out,” says Catra, smiling, fangs glinting.

Despite the green of her face and the fact she remains immobile, Sea Hawk chuckles nervously and takes a step back. “No need. I believe you!” He straightens his spine, hands on his hips. “And now, we set off!”

The boat rocks again. Catra whines and hugs her legs tighter.

 

*

 

The open sea sparks something different in Adora. She’s used to the oppressive green Fright Zone smog; the flickering lands Light Hope conjured up, always destroyed, always smoldering. Surrounded by endless blue stretching in every direction, with the sea breeze brushing through her hair and kissing her cheeks, she feels — peaceful, isn’t the right word, nor could it ever be with the ever present itch to switch back to a stronger _(better)_ body but maybe something close to it. Like nights in the barracks, her feet tucked up and Catra’s body warm against her legs.  

She stands watch at the crow’s nest. Down below, Catra and Sea Hawk chat at the helm. From the looks of it, it’s either going surprisingly well or they’re two seconds from disaster. She can never tell with either of them separately, let alone together. Catra stands with a hand on her hip and a smirk curling at the corner of her mouth. Her tail slowly sways from side to side: a good sign. With the way Sea Hawk seems focused ahead of them, and nowhere near song, it’s safe for now.

Glimmer sits cross-legged at the bow of the ship. Maps and scrolls surround her, all loose and open. She pours over them, scowling, the skin between her brows pinched tight. Majority of her bags had been filled with documents; they had been bulging with them, scrolls practically spilling from the top. Which is — different. Those weeks with the Rebellion had taught Adora that Glimmer had been more action than preparation, but she guesses that with Angella captured all those responsibilities transferred over to her.

The wood creaks behind her. Adora starts and pivots around, hand flying to the hilt of her sword at her back, except it’s just Bow climbing into the crow’s nest, grin more a grimace than anything. He topples in with a grunt and then a quiet, “Ow.”

Hand settling on her hip, Adora raises a brow. “Hard climb?”

He pulls himself up, smile twisted at the corners. “I’m good.” He dusts himself off, and stands as if he’s never fallen. He’s the same height as before. Given the added inch or two to her own stature, they’re perfectly at eye level now. It’s a tight fit. “Why doesn’t this thing have a door?” Adora gives Bow a look. He grins. “What? It’s a perfectly valid question.”

“Uh-huh,” says Adora. She leans back against wooden railing, arms crossed. “Shouldn’t you be helping Glimmer with,” she crinkles her nose, “paperwork?”

“Pretty sure if I even tried to touch any of her stuff right now she’d throw me overboard.”

Another gust of wind blows past. Adora’s hair flutters over her face and she tries to brush it back. “Glimmer and paperwork: the Horde’s greatest enemy. Move over, She-Ra.”

“Now you’re getting it.” He nudges at her ankle with the point of his shoe. Adora snorts. Still smiling, Bow turns to look at the deck below them. Catching sight of Glimmer, his eyes soften. The expression lasts a solid minute until he flicks a look towards Adora and clears his throat. Then he’s looking towards Catra and Sea Hawk, head tilted, and says, “They’re...getting along.”

Adora shrugs a shoulder. “Hopefully it lasts.”

Bow hums in response. He scratches at a scab on his cheek, mouth turned down in a frown. “Look,” he says, still staring down below. “I - I know there’s...history there.” A vague wave of the hand. Adora’s cheeks burn. “But are you sure we can trust her?”

Gnawing at the inside of her cheek, she follows the line of Bow’s stare. Catra throws back her head with a soundless laugh, shoulders shaking, the line of her throat elegant and long. She thinks of Catra the day before, bangs brushing her face, the tight furl of _You don’t need me_ spoken so honestly. “She’s trying, Bow. I thought you’d appreciate that.”

“I do. You know I do,” he says. “It’s just that...we were fighting her for years, Adora. You — Look. You didn’t see what she was like while you were gone. I want to trust her. But it’s — hard.” He meets her eyes and grabs her hand. He squeezes her fingers. “You get that, right?”

She looks down at his hand. _I wonder what I could’ve been if I’d gotten rid of you sooner,_ and the clatter of her sword hitting the ground far, far below, Catra turning away without another look down — “Yeah,” she says. “I get it. It’s just…” She wants to say something embarrassingly sentimental like _She’s changed_ , but the words stick to the roof of her mouth like one of the too sugary treats she once tried in Bright Moon. She’s not sure of — anything, really. Not Catra, with her oscillating friendliness and evasiveness, or the tentative truce called between her and Glimmer, or even the detour to rescue Angella while Etheria continues to groan out in pain right beneath their feet.

She pulls her hand free of Bow’s and drags it over her face. “She’s been — good to me. She helped me search for you guys.”

“For her own political gain.”

She snorts. “Yeah.” Her hand falls away. “Isn’t that what this all is, anyways? Politics?”

“Gotta be honest with you: I’ve never been good at it,” says Bow.

“Oh man, you’re telling me.” She grins. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

He presses a hand to his chest and gasps. “Adora? Is it really you?” He pretends to stumble back. “The shock! It got me!” Adora laughs, and Bow straightens up, face split open in a grin. He holds his arms out and this time Adora doesn’t hesitate to fall into them, chin resting on his shoulder. Cheek pressed against her hair, Bow says, “I missed you.”

Adora closes her eyes and breathes in deep. “I missed you too.”

 

*

 

_The Battle of Bright Moon plays out like the hazy beginnings of a too good dream: The tanks trudge through the Whispering Woods without hitch and fire at the castle with little resistance. The tiny glittery princess puts up a bit of a fight, but she glitches fire red every so often. The crumbling of the tower drowns out her screams._

_Catra watches from her perch at her very own tank, eyes narrowed. The three princesses fumble in battle. The boy with the bows is the only one to put up a real fight, so Scorpia tries her best to disarm him. Through it all, she waits._

_More princesses arrive, except it’s a panicked fumble, a quickly disabled battle. Catra’s troops overpower them, and they’re all a yelling fright, except somehow — somehow they run off with the Moon Stone._

_Adora never appears._

_The fact sinks deep in the pit of her stomach. That castle, with its mechanical spiders and flickering visions, had to have caught her; had to have cradled her close and soothed whatever hurts she collected. She’s fine. Probably too busy with some She-Ra business to aid her idiotic friends._

_Regardless, she sieged Bright Moon. She, just shy of nineteen standard years, the youngest Force Captain in Horde history — except Adora, three months younger, held the title for a sole night before a fall in the woods — has accomplished what others have tried, and tried, and tried for decades. She strides through the halls of Castle Bright Moon, head held high. It’s a victory for the storybooks._

_She makes her way down to the dungeons that all the staff and guards had been stuffed into following the Horde’s sweeping victory. The walls are soothing lavender, softly lit by flickering lanterns. It’s a stark contrast to the sickening, mechanical green of the Fright Zone prisons._

_At the very end of the dungeons, past the terrified prisoners, she comes to a stop at a cell with a singular figure slumped on a cot. Catra stands with a hand at her hip. The Queen looks up, her face sallow._

_“Not looking so hot there, Your Majesty,” says Catra. She taps a claw against her chin. “Come to think of it, neither was your daughter last I saw her.”_

_Queen Angella frowns at her. She sits with her wings wrapped around her, like a shield. Her hair, so long, hangs limp with stray locks clinging to her sweat soaked face. The face of the Rebellion nothing more than another Etherian knocked down._

_“What? Cat got your tongue?” Catra smirks and crosses her arms._

_Silence. Queen Angella stares back with a pensive turn of the mouth. Her face is smooth, an ageless sort of youth. None of the pictures back in school ever captured her uneasy beauty quite right._

_“Whatever,” Catra says. “We don’t need you to talk anyways. You’re nothing more than collateral now.” She grins, all teeth. “Nothing more than another hostage.”_

_The Queen tilts her head. “You’re so young.”_

_Catra bristles. “No, I’m not.”_

_“Just a child,” the Queen continues. Her eyes roam Catra’s face. “Hardly older than my own daughter. And the Horde —” She sighs. Her eyes flutter shut. “This war is a tragedy.”_

_“What’s tragic is how pathetically you princesses lost,” spits Catra. Her hair stands on end. “Your shiny little savior never showed up. Your entire kingdom lost. You’ve lost.”_

_The Queen curls in further. Some of her wings’ feathers singed dark sometime ago. “We all have.”_

 

*

 

One day stretches into two days into three. “This isn’t a day trip,” Catra said last Adora asked how long till they reached the island, and then she rolled her eyes and pointedly turned away when Adora groaned.

The sea does Adora good, really, genuinely. She scales up to the crow’s nest every morning and stands watch for hours and hours until Bow or Glimmer call her down for meals. It’s all that endless blue unfurling before her. She likes it too much, maybe. Something about its wavering calm; its unknowing depths. There weren’t a lot of bodies of water bordering the Fright Zone and the showers were timed at exactly ten minutes, either lukewarm or freezing depending on your luck. No time for relaxing. This, though, standing so far up with nothing but water surrounding her — it’s better than any Mystacor hot spring or bubbling lavender beach. Sometimes she remembers jumping into the water after that sea creature the time they all traveled to Salineas together, the way the water moved around her, the bubbles that escaped her nose when she couldn’t hold her breath any longer. A different freedom than the time she rode on Horsey into the sky.

“What are you doing up there for so long?” Bow asks during lunch. A smudge of jam decorates the corner of his mouth, glittering in the sunlight. Glimmer wipes it away with her thumb.

Adora pauses. She says, “I’m keeping watch.”

“For what?” Glimmer sucks at the jam on her thumb. She pops the appendage out. “It’s not like there’s anything around here anyways. For all we know that furball’s leading us to the middle of nowhere.”

“Glimmer,” say both Adora and Bow.

“What? I’m right,” she replies and stuffs the rest of her sandwich in her mouth.

After, belly full, Adora climbs back into that little wooden basket. The third moon’s peaked sometime ago, its rays hot against the long sleeves of her burgundy shirt. She pulls it off and ties the sleeves around her waist, leaving her in her white breast guard and after a quick adjustment the scabbard at her back. There’s little freckles covering her shoulders and arms from their trip through the desert, like little stars in the Eternian skies or the splattering on the bridge of Catra’s nose. They’re new. Different. Her skin pulses with the newness of it.

 _Wrong_ , a thought occurs to her. Except — it’s not her own.

Adora pauses. She covers a single brown freckle with the tip of a finger. _Wrong,_ the voice says again, stronger, firmer. Her hands itch for the familiar hilt of her sword. She wants, viscerally, suddenly, to speak the words and stretch her limbs and bone to a surerer shape. Her skin pulses and pulses. The sea breeze brushes past, raising every hair on end.

 _Wrong, wrong, wrong_ , the voice sings.

Adora climbs down so quick she lands on her ass on deck. The resounding thud forces Glimmer up, reaching for her with worried hands, but Adora shrugs her off.

“I just need to sleep,” she says. She rubs at her arms. The moonbeams are hot, almost blisteringly so. Goosebumps scatter throughout her limbs regardless. “I’m just — I’m going to lie down for a bit.”  

 

*

 

This is her body, she reminds herself. It bends and twists and moves just as she tells it to. It can run miles and miles; can climb and jump and punch through wood and thin metals. She taught it to. She trained it to, even before She-Ra. Every muscle was forged by her own doing. Even before She-Ra.

(Even with Shadow Weaver tracking her progress and calorie intake. She had Adora visit the medical practitioner every two months to calculate her body mass index, her muscle development, and tell her how to better her body, how to make it faster, stronger, better. Her rations were carefully calculated: no more or less than what she needed to maintain peak condition. _You’ll be the best of us_ , Shadow Weaver always said, tilting Adora’s face this way and that. _You’ll rise above them all._ )

The sword rests burning hot at her back. It’s been — a week or two since she allowed She-Ra to melt away and leave Adora in her wake. Except...Except it feels less allowed and more like she peeled away She-Ra’s skin layer by layer until she, Adora, stood on the dead sheddings.

The mirror with Adora staring with a slender face, all baby fat gone; a taller body; her hair loose instead of gathered up into the comforting pull of a ponytail. She tugs at it now, pacing back and forth across the crew members’ room. It’s tangled and sticky with sea breeze. And she’s lucky that it’s shorter, no longer falling to her waist, because she thinks, she really does think she’d tear it from her scalp otherwise.

 _Wrong_ , whispers the voice. _Wrong_.

She doesn’t sleep.

 

*

 

_Later, after Catra’s left the cells, the troops begin to celebrate in earnest. Every hall she turns into she finds a handful of cadets and soldiers laughing, destroying the decadent pink halls, throwing back the expensive drinks someone’s managed to find from the kitchens. Someone’s found a piano, somewhere, the dissonant and chaotic melody spreading even this high up in the castle. She thinks she hears Lonnie laughing._

_She keeps wandering, peeking into doors here and there, until eventually she opens one and pauses. A golden bed hangs center of the room up in the air, little matching steps spiraling from the floor up to it. The room is pink, and pastel, and bright, windows open, with clothes strewn around the floor. She wanders in and kicks at the familiar purple clothes and boots. Stopping by a dresser she tilts her head and frowns. Three little figurines rest atop it, resembling the two Rebellion idiots and Adora. Three Rebellion idiots, she corrects herself. She pushes the princess and the archer’s figurines down with the tip of a finger and leaves Adora’s alone._

_She takes a deep breath. The room practically shines, pink and pretty and nicer than anything back in the Horde, decadent in ways she had never dreamed of, not even as a child. Years ago, if something like this had been waved before her, she might’ve left. Except she might’ve not — at least not without Adora._

_Not without Adora._

_(Adora, tears in her eyes, yelling, Catra, Catra no! The way her hand curled around the jutting ledge, the excitement when she first saw Catra melting into fear when Catra ran a claw over the sharp edge of that ridiculous sword. Catra left. She left without Adora.)_

_The first slash against the nearest piece of furniture only leaves her anger coiling tighter, tighter. She tears up the bed. She throws the dresser on the floor, spilling clothes everywhere. She smashes little sweet smelling perfume bottles against the walls. She slashes; kicks; tears; destroys everything, and everything until she’s standing in nothing but debris. And for shits and giggles: Leaves a nice message on the wall with a vulgar drawing._

_The room next door is almost as ridiculous with its little waterfall, but — different. The bed less lush; the mattress concrete firm beneath her hands. The blankets are thin, still nicer than anything back in the Fright Zone, yet nowhere near as nice as the princess’ room next door. The thing is — Everything stinks of Adora, here. The air, the bed, the blankets. She turns over the single pillow and finds a knife, and yeah, that’s Adora. She waits for it. That boiling rage, the simmering anger and need to overturn everything, except it never comes, already lost in the disaster next door._

_She can imagine Adora here, curled up with her feet tucked, leaving enough room for Catra to curl up at the end. Adora, hand gripping that knife beneath her pillow, even with her face smooth with sleep. Adora, wrinkling her nose at the shimmering waterfall, at the ridiculousness of it all. But she must’ve liked it. Liked it enough to stay. Liked it enough to stay away amidst the castle’s destruction._

_Catra skitters away from the room as if chased._

 

*

 

_In the end, every prisoner of importance gets taken to the Fright Zone. Easier management, she tells Hordak. Can’t trust faceless soldiers to keep an eye on vital prisoners of war. The Queen gets stuffed into a cell, and Catra gets a promotion. Youngest Force Captain in history and now youngest Commander, too._

_(Even Adora never got that, whispers a tiny voice in her head. Even Adora never reached that high.)_

 

_*_

 

The ship stretches larger than Sea Hawk’s last. It’s one for an entire crew, he boasters during one lunch, though he’s yet to look. Still, Adora manages to explore every single nook and corner until she can map out the ship by memory. It’s not the biggest, at least not big enough to avoid bumping into the others at some point throughout the day, and yet —

She hasn’t talked to Catra in days.

The second moon completes a cycle around the planet every forty days. Tonight, only an hour or two before moonrise, it hangs crescent shaped in the sky. Bow and Glimmer are curled asleep at the bunks in the crew quarters. Adora was only able to lie down and listen to Bow’s snores for a few hours before the restlessness took hold of her and carried her up onto deck. She walks now, arms crossed, shirt still tied around her waist. Her heart thuds loud against the dip of her throat, whooshing loud in her ears.

She’s never been a wanderer. That’s always been Catra with her penchant for high places. Back in the Before, Adora only wandered the halls in search of Catra. She knew the twisting and winding paths of the Fright Zone by muscle memory; could point you in the direction of Hordak’s throne room blindfolded, but she never traveled like this. She had slept like the dead, she remembers. The second her head hit the pillow she was out. No tossing and turning; no dreams; no creepy, prophesying voices in her head.

A figure comes down from the helm of the ship. Adora pauses. There, short hair clipped back, curls escaping and flowing in the faint breeze, Catra walks towards her. She’s in her dark jumpsuit, the one with a dipping triangle at the center of her chest and a singular long sleeve. Her eyes flicker towards Adora.

“We need to stop meeting this way,” Adora says. Catra stays stone-faced and walks past her. Her tail hangs low and stiff. With a sigh, Adora falls into step with her. “Are you mad at me?”

“Aren’t you?” she throws back. Her mouth twists into a frown. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Adora crosses her arms and shrugs a shoulder. “You’ve been avoiding me,” she says. “So you’re mad at me.”

“Sea Hawk needs to sleep. I’m basically nocturnal.” Catra nods her head back. Behind them, Sea Hawk steers at the ship’s wheel and yawns wide and loud. “Not everything is about you, princess.”

Adora cranes her neck and stares up at the black sky above. It lives big and empty save that grin of a moon. “Okay.”

They walk steady and silent. This late at night darkness blankets over them, only broken by the faint shape of the second moon. Bright Moon has a name for it, she knows, but it never stuck. The Horde never much cared for things like that. She stares up at it now, hands in the pockets of her pants, the faint warmth of Catra’s body radiating from beside her.

“You ever heard about stars?” she says before she even realizes she’s said the words. A warmth threatens at the back of her neck. She chances a glance at Catra.

Catra scowls up at her. Her arms are crossed over her chest. They’re nearing the ship’s bow. “No.”

“They’re like...They’re sort of like the moons. Kind of.” Adora shrugs a shoulder. “They’re these little pinpricks of light in the sky. Kinda like someone grabbed a needle and poked at the night over and over again.” She comes to a stop and tilts her head up, eyes fluttering shut. Eternia’s sky, even blanketed by smoke and ruins, blooms against the back of her eyelids. “They twinkled,” she breathes. “But they’re gone, now.”

“Gone where?”

“They didn’t go anywhere.” Adora turns to look at Catra. Her eyes glow blue and gold in the dark, as if she’s the source of all light here and everywhere. “We did.”

A slow blink. Catra cocks her head to the side.

“Etheria hasn’t always been the only planet. It still isn’t,” says Adora. “We’re stranded; alone, without other planets, other stars.”

“That why you think it’s dying?” Catra asks.

She nods. “It is dying. I — I’ve felt it, Catra. I still can, sometimes. When it’s quiet like this, it’s almost all I can hear.” She pushes her hair back. “It feels like...It feels like something bad is gonna happen.”

“We’re about to break into the most dangerous prison on the planet,” Catra says. “Something bad is already going to.”

Adora snorts. “So optimistic.”

“One of us has to be.”

“A real martyr to the cause. I could learn a thing or two from you, huh?”

The corner of Catra’s lips twitches up. She pauses and starts to bite at her bottom lip, a singular fang poking out. Adora can practically hear the gears shifting in her head. “You don’t get to me be mad at me about Shadow Weaver,” Catra says, finally. Her brows furrow. She stares down at her feet, cheeks flushed. “I’ve been thinking about it and just — You don’t get to be mad. Not at me. I did what I had to do.”

Adora tilts her head, considering. “Okay,” she says.

The fur of Catra’s tail bristles. “I’m serious.”

“I can see that.” Adora shrugs. “I’ve been thinking about it too, y’know.”

“Didn’t know you could think.”

“Shocker, right?” She smiles. Catra scoffs. “Look. It’s — It’s complicated, okay?” And it _is_ , in ways Adora isn’t sure how to spell out or articulate. She crosses her arms, shoulders falling from their straight line. “She was...an awful person. I know that. I do. It’s just —”

“Complicated?”

“Complicated.” She nods. “She was just — I don’t know. Last time I saw her I thought I knew what she meant to me. But now she’s dead and I don’t know — I don’t know how to feel, because I’m angry at her and everything she did to you and to me, but she —” _was there; held my hand when I was small and scared; was the first face I remember ever seeing_ “— I don’t know. I guess I just...I thought I’d be there, if anything was going to happen.” She stops; hesitates, really hesitates, with whatever she might say next, and settles for: “That’s selfish, isn’t it?”

“We weren’t really raised to be anything but,” Catra says. “Can’t really blame you.”

Adora clutches at her hands; presses them to her pounding chest. “I’m angry, Catra,” she confesses. “I wasn’t for a long time. For a really long time. But I am.” Her eyes and nose burn, but she can’t cry — _Horde soldiers must never show weakness; vulnerability was for the ill-willed_ — not now. “At Shadow Weaver. At Hordak.” She pauses. “At you.”

Catra nods. “I know,” she says. “I’ve felt — I still feel that. I’m...never _not_ angry.” Except her voice stays resolute. It never wavers. “It gets easier, sometimes. I can manage it. But it’s there, y’know.” Adora nods, and she continues: “I still hate them. Sometimes I still hate you. But that’s — harder.”

“Yeah.”

Her chuckle borders on watery. “You were my best friend, and I hated you. ” They’re standing closer, pulled together by the urgency of secrets. “I thought I killed you. I don’t know what to do with that now.”

Adora takes a slow, deep breath. “When I was training,” she starts, “Light Hope made me fight these simulations. Kinda like the ones we did in the Horde.” Her mouth dries. “I had to kill you. Again and Again. Hundreds of times. Maybe even thousands. I don’t know. I...lost count.” She wrings her hands together. “I don’t know what to do with that.”

“I thought I killed you. You trained to kill me,” she says. “Pretty fucked up.”

“Just a bit.” Adora laughs. “We were supposed to conquer the world together. You and me. Funny how things turn out.”

Catra’s face is terrifyingly close. “Yeah, well, who threw off that plan?” she says, voice soft, no trace of malice.

“I —” She chews over the words. This close Catra’s eyes take up everything: the ship; the sea; the night sky, her freckles constellations. “When I said I never wanted to leave you, I meant it.” She reaches a hand towards her. When Catra flinches, she stops, and when she doesn’t pull away, Adora runs her thumb over the curve of her cheek. “I still do.”

For a moment the quiet curls around them, broken only by the crash of waves against the ship. Catra stands stock still, entire body frozen, eyes searching Adora’s face, and she must find something. She leans into Adora’s touch. Adora watches her, chest aching, heart pounding in her throat, and Catra breathes, “Adora —”

Her ears twitch and settle flat against her head. She recoils as if burnt and takes a step back, expression unreadable. Adora’s hand falls away.

“Why are you guys up so early?” a familiar voice groans. Adora starts. With a yawn, Glimmer catches up to them and says, “It’s —” _another yawn_ “— like, five in the morning.”

“No shit,” says Catra. “I was just heading to bed. Bye.” She shoulders past Glimmer without another word.

Glimmer flushes bright red, hair a cloud round her head. “What’s her problem?” she mutters. She turns towards Adora. “Hey, you good?”

Adora blinks once, twice. “Yeah,” she answers, voice thick. She clears her throat. “I’m fine.”

 

_*_

 

When they were younger they treated the Fright Zone like a playground. Catra liked to climb and swing on the rafters and pipes and metal beams while Adora chased her from the ground. It was fun. Adora liked the thrill of the chase; liked seeing Catra’s teeth glint in the low light, the way her face lit up with laughter. Shadow Weaver allowed it for a time. They were children, after all, and all the running helped improve Adora’s agility. Then they grew taller, leaner, and the games were training simulations, and staffs, and hard knocks to the face. Catra’s smiles twisted into something unknowable.

Adora still thought it was a game. She liked the way her stomach turned when Catra brushed up against her or pounced on her; the way her chest ached when she leaned in too close. The thrill of a chase turned to something else entirely.

 _Let go_ , Light Hope commanded, and Adora tried, she really tried, but lying awake on her cot now, hand still warm with the ghost of touch, she thinks she’s still that girl looking up at the pantomime shadow of her friend, pursuing an unknowable truth.

 

*

 

_When it came to a promotion Catra never expected the paperwork. Some she delegates to an overeager Scorpia, and the other to a fumbling Kyle, but she still can't escape it. Get troops new uniforms this, the cadets need new textbooks that. It's exhaustively mind-numbing._

_Catra escapes when she can. The prisons have a strict meal schedule, so no one really bothers her: the guards cycle three times a day to give the trodden prisoners their dull food rations. Other than that, the guards keep to their main station and keep an eye on the cameras. Except for one instance, no one's ever escaped the cells anyways. A fluke. An Adora-stamped fluke._

_The top floors house the most dangerous prisoners: All the ones that Hordak needs kept close until he can ship them off to Beast Island. Shadow Weaver rests catatonic in her cell, as she has been the weeks following her demotion. She never looks up; keeps her gaze firmly locked on the floor or the walls in front of her. In all this time, Catra hasn't seen her take a bite of her food, though she has to be eating given the empty trays the guards collect._

_It's not as fun as Catra thought, regardless. What's the point of taunting a prisoner that never reacts?_

_Beyond Shadow Weaver’s cell, at a corner no one except those of high ranking could access, rests the Queen. She always sits on the floor with her wings curled soft and tight around her thin frame. Catra’s sure that her hair has seen better days: the long, pink locks hang oily and lank around her face every time she stops to visit._

_Today’s no different. Catra disables the cell entrance and steps inside with a smirk. The Queen, curled up at a corner, keeps her gaze towards the opposite wall. A tray with gray, cool shapeless helpings of Horde sludge sits untouched several feet away from her. Stepping forward, Catra nudges it with the tip of her toe and says, “You do know that starving yourself isn’t going to change anything, right?”_

_Queen Angella frowns up at her. “I’m not hungry.”_

_“Sure you aren’t. The guards told me you haven’t eaten in, what? Three days.” Catra crinkles her nose. “Too good to eat the people’s food?”_

_“Excuse me?”_

_“I’m just saying,” she starts, a hand on her hip, “you royal folks sit up there on your pretty thrones with your decadent clothes and a staff full of cooks, waited on hand and foot.” She cocks her head to the side. “What about the people who weren’t born into a good family name? What do they get? What about the orphans that get sent here, with food just like this?” A scoff: “Too good to eat like the rest of us.”_

_The singed feathers of her wings bristle. “I’ve never said —”_

_“You didn’t have to.” Catra’s mouth twists into a smile. “Enough about that. You know what I’m here for.”_

_“I’ve told you before: I’ve no clue where the alliance is.” The Queen flicks a glare at her. “Even if I did, do you really believe I’d tell you?”_

_Catra shrugs. “Then I guess we’ll just keep sieging every kingdom until we find them.” She examines her claws. “It’s too bad, really. If you were more helpful we probably could’ve negotiated some kind of treaty. Maybe even would’ve been more lenient with your daughter’s punishment once we catch her  —”_

_“You’ll never get her. Not again,” hisses the Queen. “Don’t you understand? You’ll never win. Even if the Horde managed to take over the planet, you’d never win. No one does in this scenario. This is nothing but your own self-destruction.”_

_“Oh, Your Majesty.” Catra kneels on one knee, arm slung over her thigh. “That’s where you’re wrong.”_

 

*

 

_She dreams, sometimes, in that lonely room all by herself, no other cadets to lull her to sleep. Dreams of gold and red; of a fluttering cape; of the whirr of something rounding the corner, mechanical and creeping closer, closer; of a pair of blue-gray eyes, more familiar than her own hands, blinking back tears from down below._

_The dreams are nothing new. She wakes in cold sweat. She wakes with shuddered breath. It takes her a minute, and then two, until her limbs unlock and she can move. The air, heavily conditioned unlike the smog infested outside, raises goosebumps along her bare arms. The familiar navy blanket at some point tangled around her ankles._

_She pulls the tattered old blanket up and rolls over, pressing it to her face with a deep inhale. The faint scent of standard soap, of human skin, even sweat that clung so resolute to Adora has faded long ago. Still, Catra tries. It’s all she has left._

 

_*_

 

“So, there’s a bit of a problem,” Catra says, two days later. They’re all at the helm of the ship while Sea Hawk steers. “I know where Beast Island is and more or less how the prison works, but I don’t really know the actual layout.”

“Of course you don’t,” says Glimmer.

Catra gives her a look. “Sorry, Sparkles, that a prison thousands of miles away wasn’t my top priority as second-in-command. I should’ve known that years later I’d try to break in with the world’s most annoying princess.”

Right as Glimmer opens her mouth and steps forward, Bow shoots his arm out to block her. He scowls at her, an eyebrow raised, and surprisingly enough her shoulders sag and she crosses her arms with a pout.

“So we scout before we break in,” Adora cuts in. “Shouldn’t be too bad.”

Catra shakes her head. “They have security around the island. Ship this size? They’ll know we’re coming.”

“We do have rafts,” says Sea Hawk. “If you were to sail out in those, you could avoid detection.”

“Yeah. And then when we get to the island itself, we could scout around the prison, figure out the layout, and then plan the break in,” Bow says.

“That could work.” Catra frowns up at the clear sky, not a single cloud in sight. Her hair’s tied back, except it’s so short that dark curls spring out and frame her face regardless. Adora forces her gaze away. “Better than nothing.”

 

*

 

They set off at night on a single white rowboat. Sea Hawk stays behind, keeping the ship anchored a few miles away from the island. Back up. Just in case. He handed them a handful of flare guns and hugged them all tight — except for Catra, who hissed when he reached for her. Unsurprising, really.

Adora and Bow row the boat with Catra giving them directions until eventually the island rises up over the horizon. A long patch of land in the middle of nowhere with a crop of tall trees towering towards the sky and mountains as high as can be. The crescent moon offers little help in making out anything else.

“It seems...quiet,” says Bow. “You sure this is it?”

“Yeah,” Catra replies. Adora looks over her shoulder and catches sight of her scowling up at the nearing land. Their eyes meet for a moment and hold, and hold, until Catra looks away first to scowl down at her compass.“This is it.”

There’s a mangrove forest with trees so tightly stitched together they may as well have made a quilt. They row into the forest as deep as they can until they reach a dead end and then leave the boat abandoned, wading knee deep in the dark water. Over the horizon the third moon begins to rise, setting the sky aglow in varying pink hues. Even this early in the day the air is thick with humidity. Sweat drips down her back; collects at her hairline, sticking her hair to her face and neck. She peels her shirt off an hour in and ties the sleeves around her waist again. It vaguely reminds her of the jungle hiding Halfmoon’s caves with its blistering heat and unbearable humidity. She-Ra fared better that time.

A loud splash. Adora turns, reaching for her sword, only to find a red-faced, soaked to the bone Glimmer struggling to get back up while glaring at Catra.

“Are you kidding me?” she hisses. “Seriously, Catra? _Seriously?”_

Catra looks delighted. “Hey, you tripped on your own.”

“You piece of sh—”

“Can we not do this in the middle of enemy territory?” Bow reaches for Glimmer, a hand at her elbow, and helps her up. “Anyone else remember that we could, y’know, die at any moment?”

Adora raises a hand. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“Thank you, Adora.”

 _“Thank you, Adora,”_ Catra says, lowering her voice. “Kiss ass.”

Glimmer kicks at the water and it splashes over Catra. With a shriek she jumps behind Adora, fur and hair bristling. “Dumbass,” says Glimmer, smirking.

“You’re such a fucking brat, did you know —” Catra tapers off. She tightens her grip on Adora’s shoulders, claws unsheathed. Adora flinches, opening her mouth to protest, except —

Behind Glimmer a four legged creature over seven feet tall stares back at them through the mangroves. It has curling, iridescent white tusks surrounding a long, protruding snout with fangs the size of Adora’s forearm peeking out of its mouth and glowing, pupiless white eyes. Its chest heaves with labored pants, puffs of smoke escaping its flaring nostrils.

“I think,” Adora says, taking a step back, “that we should run.”

 

*

 

The creature chases them through the mangroves. It tears down tree after tree with its tusks, roaring after them, spit flying out of its mouth.

“What did I say about fighting?” Bow yells at one point, nocking an arrow. His voice cracks. _“What did I say?”_ An arrow lodges itself right into the creature’s side. It roars and gains speed.

“Is this,” Glimmer says and with her staff throws a burst of violet energy in the creature’s direction, “really the time,” the energy curls around its body and lifts it into the air, “to say _‘I told you so?’”_

“Yes!”

“Shut up!” Catra leaps from tree to tree, jumps off a branch, body spinning in the air. She swipes at the creature’s face. A burst of bright red blood sprays over them. It screeches, loud enough that Adora’s ears pop, and thrashes in Glimmer’s hold.

“Hold it,” Adora yells. She draws her sword out. “For the honor of Grayskull!”

Light fills the creature’s self-made clearing. Adora’s limbs stretch and lengthen, a familiar burn. She doesn’t wait for the transformation to finish: She launches herself into the air and slashes at the creature’s face once, twice.

The light fades and She-Ra lands in front of the screaming beast. Glimmer’s magic faded sometime ago. The beast slams into the trees and trips over its own feet, face gushing blood. Those iridescent white eyes burn red, blood flowing like tears down its face. It roars again; thrashes its head from side to side.

She-Ra watches, head tilted to the side. A yellow glow emanates from her skin. She twirls the sword in her hand and it transforms into a golden lasso. A quick swing and the loop catches the creature’s left tusk. A flick of the wrist brings it down to its knees. It no longer roars. Whimpers escape the thing. She-Ra lets the rope fade back to a sword. She steps closer.

It turns its head towards her. Its mangled, unseeing eyes flicker everywhere. It whines. She settles a hand on its snout right before driving the sword right between its eyes.

“Adora?” a familiar voice calls. She-Ra ignores it. She pulls the sword out. Blood splatters over her face, her hair. She wipes the blade over the beast’s fur.

“What was that thing?” Bow asks.

“A snorter,” She-Ra answers, voice both Adora’s and something else layered one over the other. She keeps her hand pressed to its snout. “They travel in packs.”

Silence. She-Ra stares at the snorter. It stares back at her, lifeless. It is still warm.

“Adora?” Catra’s voice says, closer now. A hand settles at her elbow. “Adora, c’mon.”

She turns her head. Mismatched eyes narrow up at her. A scowl curves at Catra’s lips, a single fang poking over her bottom one. Blood cakes her curls together. She’s entirely soaked through, the patches of fur at her elbows fluffed up.

 _She’ll be annoyed_ , a voice that is not She-Ra’s own thinks. _It takes forever to dry out her fur._

She-Ra blinks once, twice. She touches her temple and clenches her eyes shut until the golden glow surrounding her body flickers and fades. In She-Ra’s place stands Adora, thinner and smaller, hair matted and thick with blood. She falls to her knees.

“Adora!”

She’s not sure who cries out. Hands help her up; drag her away. She groans and blinks away dark spots from her vision.   

Around them, the mangroves lie toppled and torn from the ground. Bow holds her up, her arm slung around his shoulders. He’s the least beat up of them all. Only a few drying flakes of blood decorate his cheeks and chest. He stares down at her, eyes wide. Catra and Glimmer stand around them, the group forming a small circle. Adora’s eyebrows furrow. “What happened?”

 _Say it again. Say it again_ , that tinny voice whispers. _Grayskull,_ it cries. _Grayskull._

“You killed the snorter,” Bow answers. “Which, by the way, how did you even know what it was?”

Adora shakes her head. “I — I didn’t,” she says. “I didn’t know. What are you talking about?”

Glimmer and Catra glance at each other. Stepping forward Glimmer says, “Okay. I think we all need to rest. Preferably away from here.” She grabs Adora’s other arm and helps Bow hold her weight up.

“Yeah. The island’s big, but they’ll have to have noticed,” Catra waves a hand, “all this.”

“Okay.” Adora’s head lolls towards Bow’s. Her forehead touches his cheek. “That...That sounds like a good idea.”

 

_*_

 

_Here’s the important thing: Catra’s good at her job — or at least she’s good at trying, which is more than anyone can say about Shadow Weaver. She fumbles in those first few months with the logistics, all the boring paperwork. Had it been anyone else, Hordak would’ve lost it long ago._

_When it comes to battle strategy; to riffling and searching through their enemies’ defenses, their weakness, that’s where she shines._

_Salineas falls, soon enough. That big She-Ra gifted shield of theirs hardly puts up a fight after Entrapta gets through with it. The troops march in and overtake the civilian homes, and then the castle. That pretty mermaid princess with her shining blue hair, and heavy-lidded bored eyes narrowly escapes which doesn’t matter much when Catra plops onto her throne and has Kyle run to the kitchen to get her some of those gourmet tuna snacks. No one even shows up to help the sorry wreck of a kingdom. It’s pathetic._

_She all but skips to Shadow Weaver’s cell once she returns to the Fright Zone. The old lady still blankly stares at the wall, but the last few times Catra’s visited she’s actually flicked a look in her direction, which is more than enough. She brings food this time: some of those small lemon cakes in the shape of a fish from the Salineas kitchens. She offers them to Shadow Weaver, and when she doesn’t even acknowledge the gesture, she plops onto the floor with her legs crossed and nibbles on the snack._

_“It’s funny, really,” she says, once the silence’s stretched out long enough. “All these years of you calling me a disappointment and I’m the one taking kingdoms, spreading the Horde further than it’s ever been.” She smiles. “Bet that pisses you off, huh?”_

_Shadow Weaver levels a stare at her. She tilts her head. The tattered red dress hangs loose around her thinning frame. “No,” she croaks, voice stretched thin. Catra actually jumps. “I’m not.”_

_“You’re...not?” Catra’s whole body throbs like a heavy heartbeat. Her hand tightens in a fist. The little cake still in her grip crumbles._

_“I...pushed —” She pauses; clears her throat. Her voice, throaty and thin from disuse, sounds nothing like the dark curling words Catra still hears every time she walks the halls past curfew or thinks, failure, failure, to herself. “I....pushed you…toward greatness.”_

_Catra shakes her head, except her heart beats loud and hard, whooshing even in her ears. “No,” she says. “This was me. I did this.”_

_A skeletal hand reaches up towards the cracked mask still on Shadow Weaver’s face, and Catra remembers — “Leave!” and crackling, fizzling red, her limbs immobile, and Adora yelling, small body a shield, even though it was her idea, it was her idea! The mask falls away and Shadow Weaver stares back at her, eyes big and neon green, wrinkled at the corners. Her face, though. Her face —_

_The scars shift along with the smile twisting her mouth. “And who would you be,” she croaks, “without me?”_

 

_*_

 

_Erelandia falls quick: A few strategic attacks on surrounding villages; a few weeks cutting off supplies and the flimsy little princess with wings like a bee bends the knee, blubbering about her people, and her kingdom, and blah, blah, blah. The logistics don’t matter, honestly. It’s all another check mark off her list. Another kingdom taken for the Horde by her hand and her hand alone._

_Lounging casually on the throne while Sweet Bee flits around the room, Catra allows her head to loll back. She closes her eyes, breathes in deep and long, tracking the heat of the third moon’s rays on her skin, the faint breeze from the open windows. The throne sits center in the half-roofed dome ceiling of the palace, only three stories up. Most Erelandians could fly, apparently, but kept low for their non-winged civilians._

_Sweet Bee, after that crying spell, seems to have adopted the role an overeager hostess. She offers Catra sweets, and snacks, and little meats all stacked together on silver platters. She offers her blankets, and clothes. She offers, and offers, golden curls a frizzy cloud around her head, fluffed up so tall it added an extra inch to her small frame. Her smile borders on manic._

_A week later, while checking on troops at the ground floor, Catra’s smacked at the back of the head hard enough that her ears ring. She stumbles forward, a hand reaching up to touch the now wet spot on her head, dazed and vision blurry, and then another smack and she falls to her knees._

_She looks up and meets Glimmer’s biting smirk._

_Listen: No one comes out the fight looking better than one another. At one point Glimmer clocks her so hard across the face with the blunt end of her staff that her eyebrow splits open, blood gushing into her eyes. At another Catra sinks her fangs so deep into the meat of Glimmer’s forearm that she thinks she touches bone. One of her ribs definitely cracks throughout the entire scuffle, and she’s close to swiping that ridiculous smirk off the sparkling princess’ face with her claws when Scorpia barges outside, sporting a nasty purpling bruise over half her face, and shoves Glimmer into the moat._

_“That’s what you deserve, rebel scum!” yells Scorpia. She scoops Catra up in her arms and tears up once their eyes meet. “You’re bleeding!”_

_“No shit,” she replies, voice gentler than she intended. She squirms in Scorpia’s embrace. “Can you — Can you put me down?”_

_Scorpia ignores her and sets up in a run through the castle halls. “I need to get you to a medic or a healer immediately. Oh, wildcat, they tried to stage a coup! Sweet Bee was in on it, and she ran off with that mermaid princess.” She shakes her head. The bruise spreads from the cut of her jaw all the way to just beneath her eye. “Don’t worry. We still have a hold of the castle, and you’re okay, and so is Entrapta —”_

_Catra relaxes in her embrace. She closes her eyes against the blurry daze of her changing surroundings, head pounding, ribs aching. She forces a breath through her nose._

_“Boss?” A jarring stop. Catra’s eyes snap open to find Scorpia frowning down at her. “What’s wrong?”_

_She smiles, blood thick on her tongue, coating her teeth. “Nothing’s wrong. The Rebellion’s back,” she says. She closes her eyes again, resting her cheek against the crook of Scorpia’s shoulder. “I was just starting to get bored.”_

 

_*_

 

They’re maybe a mile or two away from the destruction when a group of standard Horde skiffs fly overhead. This far out they’ve reached forest with solid ground. They hide in the trees and stare up through the foliage as Horde soldiers fly above them, blasters at hand. None look down. Adora holds her breath until the last skiff flies past, and only once no more follow does she exhale.

“I think they’ll know we’re coming,” whispers Glimmer.

“No shit,” answers Catra.

None of them move. Adora stumbles forward, knees shaky, and raises a hand when Bow reaches for her. “I’m fine,” she says, taking another step. She makes it to a small clearing. When no Horde soldiers rain down on her, she continues. “C’mon,” she calls out. “We have to find shelter before nightfall.”

 

*

 

They settle in a small cave hidden by a rumbling waterfall. Outside, the waterfall fills a large river that curves deeper into the island. The trees and bushes reach right towards the very edge of the water. If it weren’t for Bow’s keen eye they would’ve never caught sight of their temporary camp.

Catra’s curled up by the small campfire. If it weren’t for the small, barely noticeable twitch of her ears with every rustle of movement she’d seem fast asleep. Nearby, Bow sits and tinkers with a tablet. Some sort of locator, upgraded from the one Adora knew of years ago that detected First Ones’ tech. Glimmer’s asleep, though, curled up in a small sleeping bag right beside Bow. Her soft snores fill the cave. Adora keeps watch from the mouth of the cave, leaning against the hard stone, arms crossed.

The third’s moon just beginning to set outside. It alights the sky in gleaming pinks and yellows and oranges. There’s barely a drop in temperate. Sweat collects at her hairline, her back, even her stomach. She’s tempted to hack at her pants until they’re nothing more than shorts, but she’s too exposed as is. Something about her skin screams paper thin; her bones hollow, eaten away. If it weren’t for the blaring heat she’d bundle up until she could barely move.

Her arms tremble. She pushes off the wall, says, “I’m going to scout around the area,” and steps outside before Bow can get a protest in.

Despite growing up hearing tales about Beast Island, she’s never heard of a snorter before. All the beasts the cadets talked about were made up. Childhood horror stories, all more terrible than the last. A competition to see who could scare the most people. Adora once imagined a horrible misshapen beast with hundreds of legs, a single eye, and a large gaping mouth that tore through everything in sight. She never told anyone; thought it too dumb and not nearly scary enough for their silly games. Lonnie and Catra were always better at spinning stories, anyways.

Trudging through the forest, now, she wonders about the voice in her head, the gaping chunk of time missing from the fight. She turned into She-Ra and then: nothing. A singular black spot in her vision until she awoke to the others’ concerned stares.

The only other time that’s happened was when she turned first transformed into She-Ra years ago in Thaymor.

She circles back towards the cave once the moon’s fully set. Her hands won’t stop trembling, but it’s not like a walk will help, not with Horde soldiers patrolling the island, aware that something else has stepped foot onto it. Whatever break-in they plan now will only be a thousand times more dangerous. They should turn back; run off and solidify the alliance. Returning without Angella would break whatever tenuous truce exists between Glimmer and Catra, though, and Adora can’t risk Catra running off again, not when she needs every princess. She loses Catra, she loses Entrapta and Scorpia, and she needs —

Gravity has tilted on its side, and Adora’s falling to her knees, a blooming ache unfurling in her chest, and somehow, somehow, Catra’s there saying, “Adora, breathe.” Catra kneels in front of her. A creeping numbness spreads from her breast all the way to her left arm, to the very tips of her fingers. Catra reaches for her and settles a hand flat on her sternum. “Look at me, okay? Breathe with me.” She inhales. Adora follows. They both hold, and when Catra exhales, so does she.

“What are you even doing out here?” Adora asks. Her heartbeat thrums loud at her ears, her throat. Her entire body shakes. She can’t stop shaking.

“You really think it’s smart to walk around alone? Dumbass.” The very tips of Catra’s claws scratch at the skin of Adora’s chest. She stares Adora down and pointedly draws a breath in. Adora inhales. They both exhale. “Bow was going to follow you, but you’d hear him a mile away. You ever listen to him walk? It’s like the guy doesn’t know the definition of sneaking around.”  

“He’s not that bad.”

“He’s almost Kyle levels of bad.”

A laugh bursts through the air. Adora clamps a hand over her mouth. She’s still shivering, and covered in a cold sweat, and she hasn’t gotten this bad in — ages, really. Since before she left the Horde. Catra kneeling on the ground with her, the hand pressed against her chest, the entire picture is so familiar, the years unfolding till it’s the two of them sitting like this back in the barracks, breathing in tandem until Adora passed out, exhausted, head on Catra’s lap. It was always them. Always the two of them, hands clasped together, running through the Fright Zone together.

There’s a scuffle behind Catra; the sound of twigs snapping beneath too heavy footsteps. Catra’s ears twitch against her head. She turns her head and says, “I told you I had her —”

The butt of a blaster comes down and strikes the side of Catra’s head. She crumbles to the floor. Adora scrambles back, a yell stuck in her throat. When she looks up, a faceless Horde soldier stares back.

“Hello, traitor,” they say right before knocking her out in a single hit.

 

_*_

 

_Inevitably Shadow Weaver regains her voice, and talks, and talks until she sounds normal once more. She tells Catra things, you see. She tells her where to find material for Horde uniforms; tells her when to best knock at Hordak’s door and initiate conversation; even tells her about the early days of her Horde career, the way she fumbled through understanding the ranks having never had a military background before. Mystacor was different, she tells her. Mystacor had magic hanging in the air, practically in a chokehold. Mystacor has the three moons shining bright, bright above their heads, keeping them soft and reckless, entirely unlike the disciplining smog surrounding the Fright Zone._

_Then come the stories of Adora. She loves Adora, you see. Saved her from becoming just another faceless Horde soldier; took her in and raised her up, up through the ranks. Youngest Force Captain in history, she says, voice heavy with pride, even with Catra sitting right there, only twenty standard years old and steadily holding the position Shadow Weaver had fallen so far from. What’s it matter, anyways? What could she say with Adora’s last pleading words still ringing in her ears?_

_You can’t compete with the dead. She needs to stop trying._

 

_*_

 

_A dream: Adora, white Horde shirt clinging to her skin, her hair falling loose from its ponytail. She leans over Catra supine in bed, a golden tendril of hair brushing Catra’s cheek. “You left,” she whispers. Her breath ghosts over Catra’s mouth. “You left me too.”_

  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always i’m @pefruma on both tumblr and twitter


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